COVID BLOG

In case you have found yourself dying to revisit that time of “uncertainty” in our recent global human history from the perspective of a stand-up comedian living in Idaho, here is a blog for you!

From March 2020- July 2020, while COVID was in full swing and I was unemployed, I wrote. I wrote about the unemployment situation, the death of a young friend, making split pea soup, losing and regaining stand-up comedy, my mother, my cats. It’s a mostly disassociated account of someone with the extreme privilege of time and resources to stay home, to study, to write, read and relfect. In retrospect, I am incredibly grateful for this time and the work that came out of it. I hope it helps make the case that when writers and artists have time and the support of a social safety net to create, they can produce meaningful work.

I hope you find some value in it but if not, if you find it a complete waste, blame its existence on the rare miracle that an American a public support system (unemployment) actually helped (some) people. And don’t worry, it’s highly unlikely to happen again.

Free the Flag

I have this stitched American flag sweater tank which has survived years of closet purges and even a move across the country, though I can’t remember ever wearing it. Why has it remained in my wardrobe? Maybe I like the idea of it… it's funny! A sweater tank top? That is not a garment suited for any type of weather. But I don’t wear it because I don't like the idea of it. I am surprised to find upon reflection that the symbol of the American flag is not something I relate to. How is it, that as someone who loves hiking, a true pioneer past time, and who recognizes the freedoms she enjoys are unique to this country, rejects its most primary symbol?

Symbols are powerful, and here in Idaho I see people regularly adorning their bodies and their vehicle with the flag who are also acting like jerks. I see them intimidating people out of exercising their First Amendment Rights to freedom of speech and assembly and I breathe in their exhaust as they drive in circles around downtown Boise in large trucks with terrible gas mileage just to, I don’t know, prove a point? They make the flag look bad and their actions seem to say, this is what America looks like and it’s ours, not yours.

It’s deeper than that though, I have had this tank top for a long time. I’d probably have worn it by now if I associated the symbol of the flag with my freedom but I don’t because I don’t see our country as having ever been truly egalitarian and free for all people and I believe no one is free, until we are all free. Some flag-flyers believe that America is free, that they are free and they hail the flag, and lets not forget the poor eagle, as symbols of that. 

Armed with the self-knowledge of my own departure from national pride, I decided to take stock of the things I do love and am grateful for and for which the America flag represents for me. This is where I live and where I am raising my two cats. I have an education and am free to tell my stories. I get to choose who I marry, if I marry, and whether I have children or not. I get to know people who look and think different from me and be enriched by their influence. And I live in Idaho, where the hiking is phenomenal. So in an effort to Free the Flag from the tyranny of the times, and to represent my own interpretation of America’s most basic symbol of freedom, I’ll wear the sweater tank (when the weather is just right, of coarse.)

Back to Books

I am finding some things out about my reading process; I like to be engaged with multiple books at the same time, a literary polygamist. When I am on my way to sleep or out in nature, I prefer fantasy or science-fi. I always need to be reading something that is non-fiction and preferably topical as this acts as a root in everyday life. I have grad plans, like reading all the classics, though those may have to wait until retirement.* In general, I prefer to hold a book, but will sometimes listen to one that has a particularly good narration, typically of the non-fiction genre.

*Retirement is not something I actually believe my generation will have the luxury of. When I say retirement, I mean when I decide to live my final days off the grid in a yurt. I’ll die in the way I want, by some means of a particularly harsh winter, perhaps buried in snow. My body stumbled upon by hikers in the spring, mostly decomposed, holding a note that reads, “Thank you for taking the time to bury me somewhere around here.

To sleep, I am on the second in the Dragonriders of Pern series, Dragonquest. It was recommended to me as a series that centers on a strong female character and that was true for the first couple chapters of the first book, but that character has faded into an idolized hero who is also suddenly subservient to her male leader partner and I am less than enthusiastic about that. It serves its purpose to put me to sleep and I keep reading, hoping her character comes back into the spotlight. I continue to chip away at Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone, our text from my class which I did not finish. It answers questions like, why do people vote against their own interests and what sorts of strategies to policy leaders use to get their agenda met. I am listening to The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom. It is a memoir rooted in not only in her experience as an African-American woman growing up in New Orleans East, but also in her research of city records, census data, archives and the multi-generational memories of her family. She is not much older than I, and the book makes undeniable the truth that we are not living in such different times, that systemic racism is still woven into nearly every aspect of this country’s founding, from schools to city planning and zoning, to policing.

I possess a compulsion to rearrange furniture in my house, typically when I am not feeling right in my brain. It used to be nearly constant, weekly, monthly, an effort to correct an inefficient use of space, to set things which we so constantly out of order, right. I told my therapist about this, and she said that when she works with kids who have been traumatized in play therapy they will often move the furniture around in the play house. I haven’t felt the compulsion since well before quarantine, its been months at home, feeling mostly settled despite the chaos around me. It is a signal that I have been mostly mentally stable, something I am proud of. I attribute this to a few stable and primary friendships, my unemployment claim, which thouh constantly facing has come through and to safe, stable and affordable housing. But I was ricked last week due to outside stress of the pandemic and the nearly complete loss of hope in our country and its systems, the conversations and strains that it has put on my friends and our relationships.

Preempting my need to rearrange was the indulgence of fantasy, of life different from mine. I went fully into the #hotgirlvintagervrebuildlife hole, complete with jealousy and insecurity. I let myself go all the way down and then, desperate, looked to my cat, Fabs who said with her eyes, “Me in an RV? Get real. Please don’t. I like it here.” I sat up, looked around and realized how right she was. We have a great apartment in the downtown area of a growing city, a block from the river with a view of the mountains and sunset from out patio. Plants and birds and green trees grace the outside space. This is really the best possible scenario right now what I needed was to remember that and give it a little care. So I moved a few things around, but it wasn’t the chaotic, disorganized, takes me three days and I end up with piles of stuff, rearrange like that of the past. It was medium tweaks, minor adjustments with a minimal amount of work and maximum intention, resulting in a deeper settling in.

As part of the process, I also re-arranged the books on my bookcase, this time by category.  These are long shelves; the bookcase stands waist high but about six feet in length and it sits under the mounted TV as mantel the cats like to la on. It’s wood is stained a tad darker than I would like, but sanding and retaining is a project for next year, perhaps. I got it off Craigslist. It lived previously in the children’s section of a library in Payette. On the top shelf, from left to right are novels and books of essays by contemporary authors, the ones I’ve read most recently, like Swing Time and The Dutch House. Then there is the Elena Ferrante series, and then comedy and writing, then cookbooks, and finally, my spiritual and metaphysical collection, complete with the Bible I probably will never get around to reading. These collections are separated by favorite books and ones with cool covers, in a way that Kate remarked looked like how books stores do, showing off the titles they’d like to sell. I have an old copy of Little Women, Oh The Places You’ll Go, Cookbooks from the Middle East, and the Profit. On the second shelf down there are less relevant reads- old stuff like Great Expectations and For Whom the Bell Tolls, To Kill a Mockingbird, a few Steinbecks and a couple Mark Twain’s. Next is my too small collection of poetry, some older novels I haven’t read yet, travel and adventure books and then public administration, course text books. Titles like Everything I Need to Know I Learned From my Cats, The Portrait of an Alcoholic, Idaho GPS Waypoints and White Fragility. I took my Harry Potter Collection, The Hobbit and the first Dragonriders book into the bedroom, where they belong. On the last shelf, because I don’t have enough books to take up all the shelves, are my yoga blocks, a basket of cat toys, scrabble, a ukulele and a tambourine.

Next to my desk, on the small red record stand, sits my Webster’s dictionary and vocabulary builder, alongside Bernie’s Our Revolution and Gail Collins’, When Everything Changed. These are symbolic next reads. There is a messy pile of postcards and letters I intend to send. As I write I realize how incredibly lucky I am to be here in this space. Beyond luck, really it feels like a full-blown miracle to live here, to have these things and to feel any measure of peace in todays times. Fabs seems to agree as she jumps on the desk, her fur between me and this page and licks my cheek.

Significance

I heard something like this from an Oprah video, “Significance and service equal success…” but in a more Oprah way and to inspiring instrumentals. The word significance grabbed me. I heard that word again, maybe the same day or perhaps the next, on a George Carlin interview. He was talking about when he started to find his voice in stand-up, he said that the times around him were changing, that they were significant. “You could feel it, you could feel it…” he said.

I went down many Youtube, “whats my life purpose?” rabbit holes while avoiding work for a three-week intensive summer session graduate class on public policy, I decided to get out of the way while unemployed. Focusing can be difficult. In the most desperate moment of distraction and self-deliberation, I watched a 45-minute interview with personal finance psycho, Robert Kiyosaki. Even now while writing, I am Youtube-ing #vanlife stories and seething with jealousy over a slim woman who lives in her self- refurbished motor home with her cats… cats! Two of them!

That class- the mountain of reading, weekly discussion board posts and papers was in a way a distraction itself from the commitment I made to sit here and write each day. Getting back to it is hard, discipline has been diffused. I cannot sit still my mind, age 2, severely underdeveloped.

For our final class project we had to create a policy brief- a two page document outlining a policy proposal. A brief is used to educate an official who might be voting on a policy but has likely not read it in its entirety. I took the creative vigilante angle and created a policy that would pay the rents and mortgages of people who live below the medium income through next year and the impending recession. It was originally titled 2020/2021 Zombie Apocalypse Prevention Act but in my class pitch, my professor said I should call it the WAR on something because invoking the word WAR is a strategy that gives unlimited power and spending, I mean its WAR for heavens sake!

This was the train that dropped me off at George Carlin; he appeared magically in the results when I searched, war on homelessness. “You never hear about a WAR of homelessness do you?” he asks. “That’s because there is no money in that problem… a home is an abstract idea… these people need are houses, physical, tangible structures.” So I called my policy, WAR on Houselessness and I posed a choice to imaginary officials- pay rents and mortgages or send millions into the streets and homeless shelters. This is also a political strategy, you give a sense that there are only two options and you make the one you want seem like the only acceptable one. I learned a lot in this class, almost too much. The subjectivity and value-driven nature of policies and the politics that come out of them, it turns out are rules, rather than exceptions. That knowledge, against the backdrop of a childhood in the system, and the fresh, fresh experience of the unemployment system was then in the last week, catalyzed by the most tragic of system failures- policy brutality and the murder of George Floyd.

I vacillate between youtube videos of political commentary and comedy, podcasts, series, audio books, social media outcries, any and all media to educate myself and also fantasies about living in a RV with my cats. My mind is on a stretcher; the thoughts I have are larger than my ability to hold them. I’ve taken to Ukulele, for real this time and, well now I have done this. Im still flirting with the idea of recommitting to a daily writing practice.

I am circling around the idea that in looking for a life of significance, the opposite occurs. There is nothing significant in looking for significance. Significance seems to exit independent of intention or wanting or even work, though all those things may bring you to its door step, it doesn’t permit entry. Significance is a momentary thing, like a warm blast of air on the river. You enter into it by chance and pass through. Love seems like to be that too, unable to be held… on the outside anyways.

I woke up 6:30am (by alarm) today, thinking last night, “I’ll wake up at sunrise and I’ll be a writer. It’s been a cloudy cold morning, my IBS is acting up and my long distance lover has disconnected. So all I have actually have done is watch John Stewart and John Oliver videos, eaten waffles and had a self-righteous slight weep, to Billie Eilish. Do writers take baths before noon?

On Choice

I forgot the sun rises before 9am. Im not sure if it was my IBS or the poison oak rash burning my thigh that woke me up at 4am but it was certainly my thoughts that kept me awake this morning. The sexiest way to start, I know. The cats encouraged me to stay in bed as long as possible, so I read the rest of Swing Time and a Patreon post from fellow trauma survivor, comedian friend, Emma Arnold. The two pieces, together, coalesced with my thoughts- the needing of rest, the having of time. The cats. The end of an empty life.

Each time my fantasies about life, in the most general terms (career, kids) detours, I get a little closer to laughing at myself. This nauseating process of indecision has plagued me almost to the point of comic exasperation. Yesterday I interviewed, no wait, excuse me, I had a “discovery conversation” with a company that sells, mostly life insurance and ironically, a sense of security. “Are you ready to start your career as a financial advisor?” Um… its May, I haven’t done my taxes, am currently on unemployment and this is the most money I’ve made my entire “career,” so yeah, 5 out of 5, very interested!

It is not for lack of opportunity or inspiration that I have ended up in this life eddy, approaching 35 with a blog and paddle board to show for it. My long time, older and much wiser friend Nancy and I talk about children. She is one of the only people bold enough to ask me about how I feel about having them, a kind of intimacy in conversation I only realize I crave when she calls. Nancy has two daughters, each have two children of their own and she is in love with all of them.

She’s brought this one moment up many times in this conversation. “I’ll never forget when I first asked you about children, you said, ‘I don’t know if I could share my body like that.’” I think that moment stuck with me in part because her reaction to it was so strong, maybe she sucked her breath in or paused, startled or stopped the constant motion she is in when bustling around the kitchen. Somehow she manages to impreganate the smallest moments between activities and logistics with meaningful converation. I think it also stuck with me because sometimes what comes out of my mouth when I talk to her, or to any rare soul who really listens, can shock me in its raw honesty. Like I turn around to see who said that, like I didn’t know I had it in me, or didn’t even know I thought that or felt that until I heard myself say it in a voice that comes out so much more confident than the one in my head.

I initially interpreted her reaction to that statement as a shock. That it was an unnatural thing to say and I felt shame about it for a long time. I didn’t understand what I said, I didn’t know why the idea of a living being inside of me, seemed so foreign.  I imagined everyone else seemed to feel that for women, having children was the most natural, primal thing your body could do so the fact that it didn’t feel right meant there was something wrong with me.

When I was with my former partner, we visited Nancy. She could see he loved me, unconditionally, told me that, asked me again about children while we drank cold white wine on her back porch and he made us blackened fish tacos. She said she’d come help me take care of the baby, “I love babies,” she said with a giddiness I felt too when I held one. That offer made the idea almost bearable and deliciously tempting. A mother, to teach me to be a mother? What a heartbreaking illusion. I didn’t have anything honest or clear to say then, I was just coming to terms with my inability to securely attach in any relationship, and was far away from being able to make my own decisions.

A break up, a couple years and a one new partner later, she brought it up again. You’d think the idea, that having children was the best possible thing, would have cemented in her mind after watching the birth of a couple more grandchildren but Nancy surprised me. She wasn’t stuck on the idea, she was turning it over, looking at it from a different angle. “Do you remember when you said…” I told her she wouldn’t let me forget. She talked about someone else she knew, who didn’t want children, who had had some trauma in her childhood but whose partner really wanted children and now she was pregnant and coming around to the idea. I told her what I relief I’d felt when Sam, within 12 hours of arriving back in the state for the season, made clear that he didn’t want children in a process that felt like vetting. That he found it fundamentally and immediately important that we agree, less go our separate way, gave me some relief. I told him it was complicated, said I didn’t know if I wanted children or not but that I didn’t think I could handle the experience, mentally or physically. I cried and lamented the premature loss of the fundamental and awesome right of motherhood, as a woman while he held me and seemed to accept that as good enough.

Nancy said it was refreshing to see so many women in my generation making the choice. That what was important was that it was a choice. That it was our choice. That statement is the one that sticks with me now, replaces the previous one about the shadows in my body. I flashed back on the feeling of relief I’d had when Sam made clear his terms. I thought then that it was because I felt suddenly relieved of the burden of having children but now I think maybe it was the relief of having to make the choice.

I can’t imagine selling life insurance as a career. It would mean asking potential clients, multiple times per day, “Is there anyone in your life you would like to be taken care of after you pass?” And when they say yes, faking the ability to relate. If someone asked me that, I’d say no. Just the cats. I don’t mind the idea of being a spinster cat lady, but I don’t want to end up one. I have to choose it. What’s important is to choose a life you can bear. The narrator in Swing Time had no children. The two women whose lives she lived through, her employer and her friend, each had many and the book ends with a simple image of her friend and her friends children dancing on a balcony while she stares up, empty from a place below.

Happy belated Mother's Day

I wrote this last Friday:

I always forget that this weekend can be hard. Maybe thats what is behind the insecurity bubbing from the bottom of my belly. A pattern, a cellular memory of all those years of Mother’s Days. Maybe thats why I am itching to be only in my body this weekend. On the river, on the river, on the river. The years between and the years within. Im not sure what she thinks but I think she thinks that my life is better off without her. I suspect that’s what she has always believed. That’s how she was able to leave and live with herself. But thats a cop out. It always was.

Can one ever quite learn how to mother ones’ self, completely?

It’s a huge weight to bear, like motherhood itself, I suppose. I guess its why I can’t ever quite let go of the hope that she’ll come back. Why part of me is still stuck waiting. Trapped in a home without a heart. How excruciating it has been to carry on without it.

This is the cry that was rumbling from deep down in this rejecting uterus. Its the sadness there that makes me not want to carry another human in it. I don’t want to bear another human into this. Thank God for the cat on my lap and for the albums I have for this (Bridget Kearney~ Won’t Let You Down)

I forget that this weekend can be hard. It’s Friday and I am glad I have remembered. Glad I have remembered to take a break. To get a little space, to spend time with myself today. To sing and clean, spend some time in my heart. Its really the only place to go, though my mind would like to go to the what ifs and the wondering. It’s tempting to go back.

I want to scoop the baby I was up and just take things from there. I look into my young mother’s face. Her tired eyes and swollen breasts, too big for her child’s frame. Long beautiful hands wrap easily around me in gentle contradiction. Her blond hair picks up the light. Her knee easily propped on a pillow, she looks at once comfortable and not in her new role. The picture is intrusive and you can see it in her eyes.

I wrote this today:

I had the best Mother’s Day.

I felt loved past the point of what I could comprehend or expect or feel like I did or didn’t deserve. I was loved past myself, past the point of over-flow. I felt so loved that I could hold both the sadness of not having a mother and the love I have for my mother at the same time. You can love someone who doesn’t love you, or who isn’t able to love you in the way you need to be loved, I’ve learned. Maybe she loves me or she thinks she does. Maybe she doesn't, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the love I have for her. Because thats how love works.

I remember many adults that came through my life as a child, questioned that. “How could you love her after what she did to you?” I understand now that sometimes love has limits. Maybe they were trying to protect me? When she was back in my life for seven or so years a couple years ago, I loved her like a little girl. I loved her like a small child who depends on an adult for their sense of security and so would do anything for them, even wait an entire lifetime. I just wanted her to come back and I loved her at the expense of myself. I loved her and trusted her completely, like a child who doesn’t know the costs of trusting someone who doesn’t understand the consequences of breaking it. I was still the keeper of her burdens then, and our relationship was an inappropriate expression, like walking on broken glass, too awkward and bright and dishonest to look at directly. I hadn’t grown up. I hadn’t felt the rage I needed to feel. I didn't know how to protect myself. I hadn’t healed. I wasn’t a woman, then.

I can love her without expectation of a response. I can give her love, in my mind without compromising my heart. I think I am starting to forgive her.

I spent the weekend on the river. I spent everyday on the river from Thursday through Monday. I felt loved all those days and none more than on Sunday. My lover made me a breakfast fit for a mother of queen cats. He came on the river with me for the second full day that weekend. I thought about all my friends who were mothers and their children who are growing up loved and I wished them a happy day. I heard a song, I thought about my mother. I sent it to her and then I moved on with the day. I moved on down the river all day.

Womanhood is overwhelming

Backyard comedy was so fun. When coronavirus quarantine started my first reaction was, “well, guess I am done with comedy!” Any excuse to abandon something I love, right? We all kept our distance, the group had some real good laughers and the birthday honoree, was a top shelf heckler. It felt like work- like real work! Crowd control, in the zone, riff heavy, practically a roast, work. You can’t kick someone out of their own backyard. I was surprised at how easy it was to transition to doing garbage art in a beautiful place. The smell of lilacs and sounds of birds chirping, and even the innocence of children playing with baby chickens in the background, didn’t compromise the affect of Montana’s consensual butt sex jokes one bit.

Yesterday felt like a day of reach, a stretching and holding of contrasts larger than I knew if I could handle. There was great productivity and also great overwhelm. I got books for kids who can’t go to Camp Opp for the first session this year! I felt so full and happy to have brokered that deal but also new worry seeded. Will non-profit egotism and politics getting in the way of this attempt like the last one? It’s incredibly disheartening when that happens and in the back of my mind I fear that camp administrators will rebuke the offer. They don’t know how crushing it is. The other thing I am following through on is an online comedy show fundraiser for Idaho Voices for Children, as my part of the board contribution. All parties are on a-go, including my headliner! But I have to set up a zoom account, figure out how those shows work, set up a ticketing site, make a flyer- Agaan, extremely exciting but overwhelming. Then there is this other project I had started last week, that is a bit of larger in scale and closer to my heart and another process I am unfamiliar with. There is the grad school 3-week summer intensive I will be starting next week. I got a job interview for a 9:30-6:00 M-F, the thought of which is overwhelming in and of itself. Then there are the feelings I have for my skydiving lover, which make my heart overflow, make me want to cry with joy and the next retreat as insecurity and fear of loss come with it. Last night I wanted to cry and dance and sleep and mastrubate- all at the same time. I wanted to take a bath AND a shower. I wanted to be alone and I wanted company. I ate steak AND quinoa. What I am trying to say is, ugh its coronavirus menstruation part three.

Yup. Two periods ago, I was closing the club down on a Saturday night! Last period I was doing this blog and that was it and this period I feel like I am doing everything and why do I do this to myself? It doesn’t all need to get done this week but it sure feels like it. I even put pressure on myself to finish Swing Time this week, but that was how I knew I was just fueling the first of overwhelm, egging it on. Next weeks posts may be a little public policy making heavy and I might cheat and post a couple of my papers. For now I think Ill go for a walk and try to focus on just one thing, just whatever is right in front of me at that moment. This has helped.

Backyard Comedy

I got offered a backyard comedy gig and, I have to admit, my heart leapt at the opportunity. The temptation to get back into comedy brain was too strong to pass up. It hit me right in the pleasure center, like an familiar olfactory triggered memory. I could smell it like, a cartoon shark smelling blood or a comic strip alcoholic smelling booze and I wanted in unecivocally and voraciously.

David is setting up the show for his wife’s 40th birthday and as we talked details, I could hear in his voice a lot of what I have felt these past couple months when I tried to do or plan anything. Its a sense of exasperation, at a loss, too tired to try, every idea puncured and sunk with well, what about this and what about that? He was on the fence about the whole thing and I could tell if I didn’t think it could work, he was going to let it go. Quarantine fatigue I think is what they are calling it. The tension is shifting constantly, which will be interesting for the show.

What do I believe? I have to take a stand and risk judgement at some point. I played it safe for a long time when it came to my opinion, increasingly so as the country divides more and more. Its was self-protection thing, it was a survival mechanism that served me well as a kid but as adult and certainly as a comic, its lost its value. I find myself in weary conversations with some people in my outer circle. Its like, I’m making more of an effort to reconnect with people I only talk to a few times a year, or haven’t talked to in years and suddenly they are curious about what I got at the grocery store? What could be behind the sudden curiosity of my grocery list? Are you that bored or are you assessing my purchases to see if I am truly only shopping for essentials?

Maybe Idaho is rubbing off and maybe thats a good thing and maybe its not. But I believe that we can maintain a safe physical distance while in the presence of each other, continue to not gather in large groups, limit trips to the store and wear masks. We should wash our hands and sanitize as often as possible. Those have been the guidelines from the beginning and we should continue to do our best at maintaining them. I don’t believe in blatantly abandoning all precautions. I also don’t believe in judging and shaming and looking wearily at each other. We shouldn't have to prove ourselves precautions at every turn out of fear that people will write us off if we don’t think and behave exactly like them. A silver lining to all the division in our country is that it is increasingly impossible to please everyone and for those of us who are groomed for it, we have to choose. We have to choose to stand behind ourselves and our beliefs and be ok with the fact that some might not agree with that choice. We have to accept that they may throw our relationship out with the bathwater. I guess this is my way of saying, Im choosing to do the show.

So into comedy brain I go… I figured I’d write out my set here, its as good a place as any.

Intro-Hey Neighbors! Hi! thanks for coming out to David and Tanya’s backyard for this unconventional and technically illegal comedy show! Big round of applause to David for bootlegging entertainment during these uncertain times. Though I don’t know about you but I never felt we were living in certain times. Lets give a bigger shout out to the reason we are all here- Happy Birthday Tanya! …

… We have a great outdoors themed show for you this afternoon; we’ve brought some of the best local talent in Boise- Montanta Burke who hates the outdoors and Dylan Hunter who clearly is the outdoors. (Dylan has a mangey beard and is very self-deprecating.) My name is Beth Norton, Ill be your host and sanitation worker this evening. (Leave a little space here to comment on the “venue” or make another topical joke if it comes to mind?)

Clap if you’re from Idaho….

Short Distance relationships

7th Generation Idahoan

Greg

Tinder

Laundry Day -> Needs/IUD

Can I get you pregnant?

Saved

(Tone shift- most raunchy)

Rollerblades

Balls-Breasts

New transition… fear is a funny thing….

Skydiver Sam (check time)

follow up with 27 club, new joke! ->Visitor

Orthodontist bit

Vagina Dialogue

Bus Testicle

And that should be 20-25 minutes. Maybe I’ll riff a bit about telling an old friend this morning that I was doing this show and they asked how many people would be there. David said, 12-20 but I told her 10. Maybe there are some battles I just don’t want to have, or I am total chicken shit, ok?!

An exercise in publication and a test of friendship

Last Friday’s post took about 4.5 hours to write and through the process I got taste of what its like to write for a living. Kate encouraged me to turn the thought I vent to her about the statement in that article into an opinion piece for the same paper who published it and the one she works at. Once I sent her what I posted on Friday she sent it back with exasperations in her edits. It was about 1,000 words too long to start and I had to make my points clearer, pic a tone and be able to connect to audiences from both working class and white collar jobs. Another two hours flew by that afternoon and I got it down to 600 words. the process was clunky, uncomfortable, awkward. We noted that his was uncharted territory for our friendship and we had jumped in with no briefing or agreements, not unlike most of outdoor adventures.

Writing that piece felt like real work. The day flew by and I felt a sense of relief and gratification to be done with it for the weekend. It hurt my brain to write so furiously. Posting it as a blog first helped me deal with Kate’s feedback. I realized that having this outlet for my voice, in its full, messy, “I don’t owe anyone anything, if you don’t like it don’t read it,” attitude, allows me to relinquish ownership temporarily, at least temporarily. And she’s right, I do tend to write a lot of run on sentences.

On Monday Kate came back with another big round of edits. She was exhaustive about it but since she is always sure to preempt her more challenging human traits with awareness about them, it was bearable. If I had been in a different place in my life, or if Kate and I didn’t already have some trust in each other, I might have reacted differently. I could hear my egos thoughts raise, like hairs on the back of my neck, and breathed easily them through them. “Kill your children,” she said, meaning drafts. As someone who has relied heavily on birth control for the last 15 years, and who has been unable to produce anything remotely publication ready, I can confidently say most of my children were dead before they were born, so I was happy to be at the place of killing them.

Though Kate constantly apologizes for pushing or being forthright in her feedback, and though it can be hard to hear and even humbling at times, it is one of the traits I admire most in her. It’s also something I need in my life. I need encouragement in that way, “like, hey, lets get your stuff out there, lets get you paid to write.” That is not something I have been able to do for myself, and I admit I need help. Since I know that her time is a gift and that she is doing this from a place of care, it makes it easier to accept her feedback without it rocking our friendship boat one bit.

Recognizing a shift like this in relationships also helps me to feel doubly successful about this whole exercise. I have failed so many friendships because I just didn’t know how to do relationships. I didn’t know how to trust or to be vulnerable or give people the benefit of the doubt. Every loss was incredibly painful and would drive me further into the belief that I was unable to unable to love and be loved. Relationally, up until a year or so ago, I was doing a ‘one step forward two steps back dance’ and creating massive casualties a long the way. This doesn’t mean that I just took everything Kate suggested. When she made a change that didn’t feel true to my opinion, I found another way to say what I wanted to. And the end of the day, it was my piece and I knew what was important was that I felt like it represented my voice and my perspective accurately. We worked together, wow what a good feeling that is, and it has been sent it off to the opinion section editor. Kate said he will likely have his own suggestions but if it gets published it will be my first and the whole process has opened my eyes to the reality of writing for a living. Its hard, not like this, which is just about sitting down and getting something out. It makes your brain work, it passes the time quickly, it teaches me how to work with others. As tired and out of it I was on Friday, I found myself deeply satisfied with the work. I found myself thinking I could be happy, if not poor and do this the rest of my life.

Resentment, just what America needs right now!

In an article published by the Idaho Statesman on April 25th, titled Idaho starts $600-a-week payment, some will get more than jobs paid, journalist Davis Staats, writes, “Some Idahoans still working may resent that they will now be making less than their laid-off colleagues and that the payments seem to provide an incentive not to work.” Now I know that this is a nod at a potentially popular sentiment and not necesarily a personal belief held of this particular journalist but, as someone who is currently making more on unemployment than I was as a bartender, I resent that statement.

I resent that statement for so many reasons. First and foremost, it is completely accurate. With the CARESAct, I am currently making three times what I was while working in the service industry AND I don’t have deal with drunk people. I also don’t have to stay up until 3:30am to close the bar and feel like trash the entire next day. I don’t have to stand on my feet for 12 hours on a slow Sunday trying desperately to fill my time with bullshit side work to combat going crazy with boredom, a depressing sense of purposelessness or even just to avoid a manager who likes to say, “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” Well now I have time to lean AND I have time to clean and the inside of my own refrigerator has never looked better.

I am on a regular sleep cycle and I eat like a human being again- whole meals, sitting down! No longer do I consume calories, while standing, huddled in a corner at 11:30pm, shoving chicken strips furiously into my mouth because only have 5 minutes and part of my compensation is a shift meal, plus our ranch is really good.

Aside from the grind of working in the service industry and the physical and relational toll that any jobs takes on ones life, this goes deeper. Not only am I now making more money and better able to care for myself but while on unemployment, I am actually confident I can pay my bills this month and for the next six, or as long as my claim lasts, or COVID related extensions are approved. Put that next to the up and down nature of earning income in the service industry, in which making rent is dependent on getting scheduled for the busy shifts that week, what the weather is like because people don’t like to walk from their cares to a building in the rain or how generous people are feeling based on the alignment of the stars, yeah, I’ll take unemployment.

How dare us, right? How dare us chronically underpaid, typically uninsured people not want to go back to our mostly shitty jobs? How completely irresponsible of us to want to work less hard for money and security? Please! To the self-righteous- speak now or forever hold your peace. Please introduce me to the people you know who you’ve heard say, “well I could have take that promotion but that would mean working less for more money, and I just, um…. don’t feel like thats right!” Wouldn’t you look at them like they were bat shit crazy? Isn’t that counter to the American dream? Isn’t that what we do here, in America? Don’t we build laters so that we can scale the financial walls that grow taller every quarter around us, in order to “give our children the opportunities we never had?” Aren’t we given full lisence to step on anyone who gets in our way, to nail their limbs between rungs on that later, if necessary just so we can climb it a little faster?

Please, America, show me examples of leaders in the public and private sectors who were like, “You know what, I’m going to grind this one out, not take big business campaign contributions and build a campaign on small individual donations and my policy platform.” Oh wait, ahem, we did and people though that was weird and didn’t vote for him! Show me some major corporation executives from places like Amazon and Fedex whose workers, are going on strike TODAY say, “you know what I am going to work harder for less money so that I can pay my workers a livable wage, because people ARE more important than profits and I do realize that our survival depends on our workforce and oh hey, I don’t really need that 3rd vacation home I was planning on building this year and you know what, I’ll even through in the yatch, because I wasn’t using it very much and it does consume an irresponsible amount of fuel.” What about the retail entrepreneur who took production to places like China and Indonesia, was your goal to work harder for less money? No I didn’t think so.

All the talented baby boomers and tech companies who have, over the past half century, taken your skills to the private sector so that you could capitalize on your education and your talents rather than put them toward our public systems, you can blame yourselves for a slow and ill functioning unemployment system that is standing between people and their rent money today. The point is, it is okay for the greedy, for the capitalistic, even for the well-intentioned middle income American dreamer, to want to work less and earn more money but it is not ok for the working poor to want the same. “Stay in your lane servant, how dare you discover how good life can be with a little financial security and REM sleep.”

I resent this statement because we, the unemployed, know that this is temporary and we don’t know if we will have jobs to go back to. We can see the end of our benefits, it is posted right there on our weekly claimant portal webpage, but we cannot see or know what business will be like when we have our jobs back. If we were barely making it before, in a booming economy, the outlook is not good. Our survival this winter may depend on how much we save now. As a country, we don’t know the economic impacts yet. We don’t know how much faith people will have to even go out in public or spend money, especially on things like going out to eat or drink or play. Lets be honest, how many of you are chomping at the bit for some private suite karaoke and a margarita right now? Okay, maybe wrong question to prove my point, the way I put there, it does sound pretty fun. However, and unfortunately the threat of spread is still real and will be for the next year to a year and half, as hard as that is to admit at this point.

I resent the original statement for one more reason. That is that it implied that someone like me, a bartender, is a “colleague” to someone who stocks grocieries at Winco. How dare you? If it wasn’t clear before it is now, the bar business is non-essential, its basically bullshit and we know it; we actually need that person to stock those groceries. And yeah, we service industry people, us drunk writers, druggie drag queens, broke comics, tatted painting revolutionaries, we are now making more money than those workers are AND we are sheltered from risk of catching and spreading the coronavirus. Do we deserve that? Do we deserve to get paid more and to be safer, yeah and guess wha so do they. Are they resentful of us, I hope not, it doesn’t serve them. I think the people who are resentful are not the working poor but the people who depend on the working poor for their above average lifestyle but don’t want to admit it, less they have to pay them more.

See, poor people aren’t like that as a rule and right now, the working ones are all probably too tired to be resentful at all. If there are some of you working for shit wages out there who think like this, that sucks; you have bought into the scheme of the ultra rich which keeps people competing for “scarce” resources when the reality is that we live in the richest country in the world and there is truly enough. If we weren’t competing or resenting, or being told we were resenting, we might organize. Remember the stock market and big business are being floated through this at a much higher rate than the average American. Here’s some rough math to put it into perspective. Those of us on unemployment are making on average, half year’s salary at about the rate of about 30,000 per year. So if a grocery stocker is making less than 30,000 per year, which they probably are here in Idaho, maybe that’s the problem.

To imply that the people still working low wage jobs would be resentful of other people also at the bottom of the pay scale shows a lack of understanding for the way we operate and is honestly the most offensive part of this statement. Give us a little credit, its unlikely we are as petty as you. The people who live and work in my income bracket, my friends, my colleagues, my fellow artists and entertainers, we are the people who help each other. We make meals for each other and organize food drives. We watch each others kids and swap clothes to refresh our wardrobes. We help each other move and listen to each other stories. We know how stretch a food budget with spices and beans. Okay, maybe some of us hole in in depression and self-loathing too, but we are free to dream. I don’t believe the majority of the working poor are resentful that other poor people are now a little less poor for a very short period of time. If I’m not incentivized to go back to work it’s not because I see a future for myself in the unemployment biz, where I can do nothing but flit my days away writing angry opinion articles; it’s because the incentives at my work are cocktails and curly fries.

The Norton Family Plants

I’ve gotten in the habit of writing these at the end of the day. It been nice to reflect and process on the day at hand but then there are times like tonight, when I am tired and I don’t feel like writing. Im ready for Dragonflight, but even more ready for sleep. Probably one of the reasons I am done at 9:18pm is because I went to Walmart. I really despise shopping but I needed some… essentials. You notice how the people in your outer circle now question things like what you got at the store and who you went camping with? Maybe I am imagining it but I feel like I am being constantly felt out.

The country is diving again?! Over this?! I can’t believe it but also I kind of can. There are the mask wearers and the bare faced. There was a woman in front of me at the check out who must have been in her late 80’s early nineties, buying a t-shirt and two gatorades, threw in a candy bar on impulse- no mask. Lots of people in Walmart not wearing masks. I feel, as a mask-wearer, judged. But also I feel like people without a mask are judging me and some of them may just be! But I refuse to engage. I am not judging behind my mask, if that lady wants to take her chances, then thats her prerogative. But when I found myself in a section of the store with only other people wearing masks, I relaxed. Not from a reduction in threat, but just to be around people who makes the same choice as me, I guess. It feels like a very primitive thing but I’m still incredulous about this most recent political divide.

Something Laurie said in the podcast I mentioned yesterday was that we have to devote spaces to basically honor ourselves and life right now. She talked about this bush she has that attracts bees and when she sits in it, they swarm around and she can hear all their buzzing, like she is in a hive. It came out quite poetic the way she said it and Jackie seemed uncomfortable and so went to a commercial break, or maybe that was cut in? Anyways, It was a moment where comedy crosses into poetry and what a terrifying thing for a comic. When I hear poetry in my head instead of comedy I wonder if I am losing it.

I have been wanting to plant my patio for a while now and today I finally did. It’s only been warm enough in the past couple of weeks to feel confident that my plants would survive and grow. My porch gets only evening sun so planting in warm conditions, while counterintuitive, I seemed unanimously well received. The whole process took a week. I had to make an appointment to buy plants, then go buy the plants, then also needed some soil and a good chuck of time, (which you think would be easy.) But to give it my complete attention, first to plan and then to plant, it took a few extra days.

I deliberated for a few days before finally deciding last night to repot the royal palm. I thought the 12” pot would be too big and I had just repotted it the year before in a 10.” It had taken near the entire season for the plant to stretch its roots out and grab on; it just wobbled in the pot all summer and I didn’t want that to happen agin. The internet says you can repot a royal palm every one to two years and the 12” was much more fitting for royalty- a blue green metalic almost quality with a pattern on the side. Wide from base to top, rather than bowled at the bottom. When I got it out of its old pot, its roots had indeed started to curl back in on themselves and sprung out as soon as they got a little space. It’s a great feeling to give a plant a home you know it will thrive in. Lorde has a regal attitude; she needs constant watering, damp soil and lots of spritzing. She’d prefer a more humid environment and sometimes I regret buying her but we are going on year three and she has a lot of new growth and is green happy.

Another part of the family, going on her second year with us, is Kristina with a K. I had repotted the hosta bulb early in the season but it was too high in the pot and its top roots were showing. Despite that she has come back strong and quick with shoots already 8” tall. She begged to be set in, wanted to be like Lorde, with room at the top for water to gather, so I lifted her out without much issue and put some of the new potting mix, and tucked her in. It is important to Kristina to be life everyone else. Since she did so well last year I bought a second Hosta this year, a Neptune, lighter green, a bit shy. He was born in the body of a woman but identifies now as male and his name is Charles. He seems to have been easily accepted by the other to. Tracey is the trailing Fushia in the yellow hanging cone strainer. She appreciates being in the action. She Is kind of like a wild fun ride, the girl at the party, you know which one. In the blue pot that was once Lorde’s home I planted a trailing Jenny and Katherine, an English Daisy. Katherine won’t grow as big as she could this year, sharing a pot with Jenny, but Katherine is a perennial and so she will come back but Jenny is an annual and she will eventually leave for “Australia” (which is where we tell the house plants the annuals go when when they die.)

In a tall tiered orange pot I planted a few flower and herb seeds as an experiment. We will see if the parsley and clalendula grow. If the Sativa make it and bring back the humming birds. That would make it quite the shrine. The spearmint platoon in the pink pot will hopefully do just fine. Then there are the Wizards something or other an orange flowering indoor plant I impulse bough tat Walmart. I have no idea what it is and I forgot to name it. But its heavy with flowers, a lush, a real over-indulgence of beauty. So many new and old happy friends I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life, or for some, the summer with.

Jus'shing the soup

Tonight I jus’sh the soup. Jus’sh(ing) may be spelled another way but I have spelled it phonetically here with a soft J. It is a process of taking a food item that maybe you have had for a couple meals and are tired of it, but is still good to eat, and making it fresh and new. You use what you have around the kitchen to fluff it, spice it, put it in a tortilla with hot sauce, whatever. I had some split pea and rice soup, I think from North Africa, (The Moosewood cookbook again,) frozen in a mason jar since early winter. At the beginning of the week my fridge appeared empty. On a non-pandemic week, I would have gone to the grocery store but going to the store is stressful so now I grocery shop every other week. In the routine that is forming, I will cook intensely for a few days and then pick off leftovers and part for a few more after that. The second week I pull half from the freezer and half from what fresh stuff keeps. Things like onions, kale, apples, herbs, garlic, tofu and carrots, all keep well and happen to be great jus’shing ingredients.

I sautéed onion, garlic and fresh thyme, added tofu which had been frozen, defrosted, squeezed and crumbled. Cooked the mixture until the tofu was golden brown then added the defrosted soup. Until I opened the jar, I hadn’t remembered that this recipe called for warming spices like cardamon and cinnamon rather than relying on pork for its depth. This is in keeping with a vegetarian skew of a diet and a refreshing take on an old favorite. I added a small jar of homemade broth I had also defrosted and topped it with fresh parsley. Herbs make everything taste rich and fancy. The effect on my stomach was kind.

Today was an all around great productive day. I kicked ass at my goals and got creative, got into a good head space. Being in that place helps me to think forward and thats hard right now but I could see a little light on the horizon. The camp I went to as a foster kid in canceling their first session, the younger kids camp. This was the camp I looked forward to all year around, even made a “count down to camp calendar,” out of construction paper and pictures from camp. It was a place I felt seen and special and a part of something and I relied on it for nearly ten years. So, shit. Those kids.

I’ve thought about kids living in foster care right now nearly everyday through this. It is a worry I keep most tucked away, some kids might be in a place where they feel loved and safe right now and some kids may not. And for the later, I wish I knew who they were and what to do for them. I tried to work with a local non-profit I am on the board for to get books to kids in foster care by partnering with some of the organizations who have direct contact with kids living in foster care… one of which was the one I used to work for. All that was accomplished was some political ping-pong emailing that ended with, “great work!” and no kids getting any books. Wait. Thee kids at camp for first session… ages 8-10…. 35 or so of them. Maybe I can get books for them! From frustration- fruit! An idea, jus’shed! Haleluiah!

Lets see, what else. I didn’t dip in motivation throughout the day, I sort of kept it rolling. As Laurie Kilmartin pointed out on the Jackie and Laurie show, if we want to do something we have to motivate ourselves everytime and it would be nice to have a break. Jackie Kashian, a Jedi, said she went so quickly into online shows and is doing it successfully now because she has trained her brain to counteract knee her reactions to things like this. Yoda level mind control I can see on a very distant horizon, the light.

My patio garden is planned and ready for planting. I took my time to think it through. I did yoga, I ran, I caught up with friends, I jus’shed the soup and now, I’ve blogged. I’m smug about my productivity, deal with it. I feel like I have earned my time in bed with a dragon woman tale and a cat or two.

There is nothing to forgive, really

The NYTimes Daily featured a poem by Roger Cohen titled, “I forgive you, New York,” and in it the author walks through the abandoned city and forgives it it for all the things it used to find so unappealing, like urine and pigeons, tourists and cafes that serve exclusively oatmeal. He does this out of effort to beg back the life of the city, to have the good back, which he is saying, without saying is worth all the rainy days and no cabs and trains that never come.

I started missing comedy last week and this week I started missing the scene. I didn’t think I would because it drives me crazy. I often wonder why I waste my time and I get my feelings hurt a lot. I don’t feel like I belong and also I feel like I belong more there than anywhere. I am grateful to everyone on the scene, even the ones who frustrate me the most. WHen this all started I was so grateful to not have to deal with any interpersonal drama. I care too much about being liked for someone who is generally, not liked. I want things to be different and I tried to through BBQs when I first got on the scene and stay neutral, stay out of it. Everyone who was running shows had years long beef and it was tough to keep straight who worked with who and what the riles were. It was a shock coming from the Kansas of the Vermont Comedy Scene, where women were prevalent and so were showcases. There was a general friendliness and everyone tried to be friends. I didn’t feel like I belonged at all there either, like anywhere and so I kept my distance and found ways to keep people away. Despite a fear of belonging and through there were times it was difficult to go to Liquid and sometimes I still feel awkward and unwanted on the patio, while everyone smokes, sometimes I don’t feel like that. Sometimes I feel like I have friends and a place and ground to stand on. The scene has brought me up as best it could.

The airing of the gripes below, only serve to fill this page, as the catharsis was in writing them out, as I have been unable to express them directly. Some of these are things seriously bother me but I haven’t been able to confront them, some are just old nagging things I don’t think about ever but which can up here and some of it I just good ol’ simple petty jealousy. For each gripe I wrote out, I remembered in contrast multiple things I was grateful for. Liquid aka Jeremy and Sophie, for example, has moved me to feature, twice! There was time there that never felt like it would happen. Crescent Brewery’s open mic was the only place I felt real comfort when I first moved to Idaho and Leif ran that mic for a long time. Jen was the first person to book me in Boise on her and Emma’s Yum Yum show, she introduced me to Alvin Williams who has been a great friend and both of them believed in me when it didn’t feel like anyone did. Emma booked the shit out of me that second year and took me on the road to feature once. Even Brian Lee set up a gig and paid me. All the comics mentioned have produced shows, paid me (sometimes) or been on shows and made people laugh and have made me laugh. Thats what I miss most. So fingers crossed no one sees this and thinks I mean harm, I mean I still need at least to be able to pretend that I am loved.

Dear Boise Comedy Scene,

I forgive you Liquid Laughs for the Wednesday open mic politics. I forgive you Dustin Chalifoux for being the first comedian I saw in Boise at the Wednesday open mic and tfor screaming “Fuck Lady Business.” Lady Business, I forgive you for hosting that mic for three years and for the period of time you didn’t like me but I never knew why. I forgive the Russian guy who hit on me that night and the white dude in flannel who cat-called me when I got on stage. I forgive you Boise Comedy Scene for all the open mics thereafter that numbed my mind with the dark, talentless and delusional voids of humanity. Speaking of which, I forgive you Leif Skyving for not playing Scrooge when you said you would during our Christmas themed show but rather doing your stupid old set and passively flipping me off with your Johnny Cash shirt. I forgive you Emmanuel for all those themed shows you “helped” with but which I did most of the work and had to drive your drunk ass to. I forgive you, Jeremy Nelson and Sean Peabody for arranging chairs throughout my first and last set at the Playhouse open mic, though you made up 1/3 of the audience.

I forgive you Taber Johnson for showing up 45 minutes late to my happy hour show because one of your rats died. I hope you forgive me for not paying you. I forgive you Jermey for paying me $100.00, plus food and drink to host six shows over four days for two years. I hope you forgive me for ordering the salmon everytime. I forgive you Eric Cole for always commenting on my appearance in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable but also shows me that you can’t read body language or subtle cues and so will never get any. I forgive you Sophie Hughes for giving Eric Cole so many spots on so many shows. I forgive you Emma for not wanting to admit we are friends around the comedy scene. I forgive you Jen for introducing me to Brain Lee. I forgive you Brain Lee for disrespecting me and then taking me off your show when I wouldn’t back down but not telling me about it and asking Montana to do it instead so I had to find out from him. I forgive you Montana Burke for taking that gig.

I forgive you Jack Gunn for how when you talk to me you lean away in fear like people now do because of the coronavirus. Along those lines I forgive you Chris Sharma for always looking like a deer in the headlights when you talk to me and you Casey Rocket for never being able to make eye contact with me at all. I forgive you KC Hunt for serial dating women interested in or new to comedy and for being perfectly respectful to me but pissing everyone else off so I am perpetually confused about how to be around you. I forgive you Derek Hayden for always taking the boys side and arguing with me on things I am clearly right about. I forgive you boys club for never inviting me on your podcasts or telling me congratulations for a gig or good set or asking how anything went or giving tips on jokes. I forgive you Jack Turnage for ascending through that boys club just by being young and cocky and laughing uncomfortably at your own uncomfortable jokes.

I forgive all the people who got up on stage and seriously offended the audience and walked tables of people right before I got on stage. I forgive you Boise Comedy Scene for all the times I’ve been put up last on a list of 20 plus comics.  Alissia, I forgive you for stirring shit up and telling funny meth addict mom jokes in your first year of stand-up. I forgive you Kat Lizarga for being better styled and more likable than I was at your age and will ever hope to be. I forgive you Chris Sundberg for giving the firmest of hugs while wearing that shirt with spoon AND a fork on it. I forgive you Olek for still being in Boise considering your talent. I forgive you Victor for having parents who loved you. I forgive you Cayden for stealing my sharpie. I forgive all the people who left the Boise scene and are doing well in comedy in other places and for those who have left the scene and are doing better for themselves in life, and for all the people who have left the scene who weren’t funny and all the people who are still in it who are.

I forgive you, I miss you, I look forward to seeing you again soon,

Beth Norton

P.s. I hope you will forgive me for all the times I pushed you away, choose a relationship instead of you, for engaging in shit talking, for not speaking up, for yelling, for the times I deviated from my set when I should’ve stuck to my material, for not sticking around until the end of a mic, for not giving you the benefit of the doubt, for not being myself at times and for not being a better friend at others. I promise to do better and I promise not to abandon you again and I promise to write some fucking jokes.

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Two more books on the bookshelf half read

The book I choose to read after We Took to the Woods and The Hobbit, is titled Swing Time, written by Zadie Smith. I heard about this book and this author during a talk Anne Patchett gave when she came to the Morrison Center in Boise last year. She filled the operatic venue with a sea of white-haired heads; my book club also attended.

Anne Patchett was an incredible speaker and I was gripped by her presentation- a story of the creation of her newest novel, The Dutch House, woven together with interviews she conducted over those years with famous authors, famous people who were authors and authors who were friends. She was funny, smart, snappy. The cadence of her speech took my breath away and left me with the notion that stand-up comedy in comparison was a garbage can. Not garbage, but in feel, a garbage can. Despite interviewing people like Tom Hanks and Melida Gates, Barabara Kingsolver and Elizabeth Gilbert, she said that the person she was most intimidated by was Zadie Smith. I can’t remember quite what Anne Patchett said about her but it was of the nature of reverence. She showed a picture of the novel’s cover, which I remember as striking me, curious-bright yellow with a clean red and black font, simple yet new. The author’s name was placed above the title of the book itself and in equal sized font, no pictures, as if to say, “this novel is Zadie Smith and thats all you need to know.”

This cover was a stark contrast to the one featured that night. Anne Patchett covered the process of her choosing it in the same breath taking speed as the rest of her talk. She had disagreed with the publishers and as a person at such a level in her career, did exactly as she please. She commissioned an artist in New York whom she knew well to draw it. A dark haired girl in a red coat, sitting to be painted, blue birds on the wall paper behind her. No houses. The cover, she explained was a depiction of a picture inside the dutch house, a focal point for the story. She wanted readers to imagine the house for themselves and she hand signed every copy of that book which she gave to every ticket holder that night. The venue seats over 2,000 and I cried hard and unexplainably at the end of that book.

Anne showed a picture of the cover of each book she reviewed and loved enough to promote, for the sake of the story she was telling, love of her colleagues and, I think, the craft. The salt of her talk was a constant reminder that by buying books from local bookstores, rather than on Amazon, you not only support the bookstore but also the author. Local bookstores pay authors quite a bit more than Amazon. She said this over and over throughout her talk, so to take her recommended reading list to Amazon would have felt like betrayal and surely devalued the experience, from her talk to each stories end. When I went to our local store downtown, Rediscovered Books, and saw the cover of Swing Time, in the obvious display in honor of Anne’s talk, I couldn’t pull away. She had effectively put me right where she wanted me and where I should be. Which is what all good authors do.

It’s neither here nor there for me to agree with Anne about the book and I don’t exactly remember what she even said about it anyways. Swing Time instantly grabbed me and like the two full pages of reviews say much better than I can, the writing emulates the ferocity of the dancers in the story. Smith touches on female friendships which span developmental stages as as complex as the characters themselves. It touches on parental dynamics and self-concepts in diamond like shape. The unfiltered self-reflection of the main character told in first person is uncomfortable, painful at times. Chapters in parts of the book bounce from one time frame in her life to another, a crude game of ping pong that is maddening and exhaustive yet addictive. We are getting at something, but what that is, I fear is the unbearable truth that the main character has spent her life suffering herself, for her own sake. It seems like such a waste. In the same way I have grown tired of myself, my own preoccupation with my own life, indecision, lack of clear direction, ability to be so easily swayed by others, living life in service to their lives, which appear more worthy or real than my own, I have grown tired of this character. It’s too good. It hurts. What keeps me reading Swing Time is not what the story is coming to, I am dreading that. I’m not interested in story or curious about the development of the character. She is not someone meant to be cared about. But I am in awe of the author’s ability to portray that while in the first person, so I continue out of respect and fascination with her.

I did take the liberty of a break. I knew that there was a chance that Kate and I could get out of town and into some alternative remote landscape again this weekend so I opened, Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffery. It is the first in the science fiction series, Dragonriders of Pern. The man who works at Once and Future Books, the other local and also mostly used bookstore out on the busy State Street, sold me on the series by explaining that Anne McCaffery was one of the first famous female sci-fi writers and that her books were classics. It was perfect read for the dessert landscape, redundant at first glance, made magic by fire and stars.

As a new fan to the sci-fi genre and as a new collector, I bought the first two in the Dragonrider series and asked to be notified when the rest in the same edition came in. It only took a couple of days to get more than halfway through the first book; I was immediately seized by the main female character. Lessa is a woman of inarguable will, cunningness and resilience. I find these characteristic irresistible and so opposite of the main character in Swing Time, whose name I just realized I don’t even know. I don’t think it is even mentioned in the book and I don’t think I even noticed that until just now. Perhaps another demonstration of her lack of existence and of the writers skill. At the moment, the power of the dragon woman and the impending challenge the world of Pern faces, keeps me engrossed and distracted from the unnamed woman who exists, or fails to exists in more or less present times.

Too much time for life reflection has gotten to me, no matter how busy or productive I try to stay. That has aways been the issue with time off. Its never fully enjoyable because I am constantly considering what it is I should be doing, how I will support myself and what I want my life to look like. What I sometimes interpret as a clear path ends in an uninspring suburban cul-de-sac. One week I’ll build a business out of SUPin, the next I’ll get a PHD and a pursue career in academia. Sometimes I think I’ll be a foster mom and home maker and other times a burlesque dancer and comic who tours Europe and resides in Amsterdam. Sometimes I swallow hard and am reminded that I could be all those things and the only thing I ever wanted to be, if I could just figure out how to write for other people.

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White bread and Jane Goodall

In the box of groceries I got on Sunday was a loaf of sliced white bread. My first thought was, “what am I going to do with this bread?” I haven’t eaten sliced white bread since foster care days. Once I got out, I considered it like prison food- cheap, lacking in substance, really not very healthy. As an adult I choose a heartier, seeded bread because I knew I should, even though, I never really liked it. I figured I’d pass on the bread or maybe find a way to cook with some of it and freeze the rest. I haven’t made bread of my own since week one of quarantine. Later that night I suddenly remembered what a PB&J on white bread tastes like, like everything and nothing at the same time. Creamy peanut butter on both side of the bread, the jelly free to move around in the middle, it was light and fluffy, salty and sweet, goes down easy but also sticks to the roof of your mouth. I made one just like that for dessert, indulging my most entitled inner child with cut crusts and square quarters . As I ate it, I ran my tongue around the edges to catch the drippings, licked my fingers, cleaned my teeth, same method. Maybe it was the exercise of the whole thing, the motions of it, more than the taste that could satisfy, on a cellular level, the craving for nostalgia.

Speaking of the best thing since sliced bread… Jane Goodall! Im adding her to the list of people I would invite to my dinner party (you know the imaginary one where you get to invite 5 people or something, dead or alive.) You invite people you would like to spend time with, some people choose Jesus or other large political or religious leaders but I like to consider the group. Would Robin Williams and Amelia Earhart get along? Would Bob Marley and Mark Twain have common ground? I always imagine myself a passive observe in the presence of such greatness, which brings me back to Jane. For Earth Day I watched her documentary titled “The Hope.” I knew what most knew about her- British blond bombshell, enraptured by chimpanzees and in turn, enrapturing. She became a beloved environmental activist. A Mr. Rogers whose neighborhood is all of Africa. Who doesn’t want to be like Jane Goodall? A perpetual warmth, compassion, passion and drive that is awe inspiring. She made friends with the people who should be her enemies- the heads of oil companies and animal research labs, because what always comes first, is the work, its the animals.

Jane was on Jimmy Fallon’s show yesterday for the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day and she said right now, on lock down, is “a time for reflection and thinking about the part we want to play in the future of our planet.” And in that she recognizes the interconnectedness of humans and animals and how this was predicted. That the selling and trading and loss of habitat for wild animals and she used the word disrespect repeatedly, has lead to the cross over of disease from animals to humans. Jimmy seemed to wrap up the conversation quickly as I think he was hoping for an interview he could show to his kids. The documentary is powerful because it shows the seeming effortless respect that Jane commands and the clarity of her message. The message is- everyone is important, has some role to play in the movement.

I have to admit it has been hard for me to focus these past couple of days, I had most of this written yesterday but couldn’t sit down. Even now, in the middle of writing about Jane I stopped to find recent youtube video about her, while also eating an apple with peanut butter and casually filing my nails. I wanted to continue on about white bread sandwiches but it didn’t hold together.

I think I know where my restlessness is coming from but, I haven’t been able to approach it and you can’t selectively sit. I just wrote it all out and then erased it. It was exhausting to try to put down and to think about.

I went for a long run yesterday, and while I kept a good clip, got red in the face and powdery with sweat, I couldn’t even begin to approach the feelings this interaction left me with. It threatened to compound the shame I battle constantly, never feeling like what I am doing is enough- for the earth, for the people in my life, for society, for myself. It was like a can of gasoline that suddenly found its way too close to a fire, the fear I have of going back into society. Ive mentioned before that quarantine is a relief because I feel fundamentally unsafe around almost all people.

Jane said that you do all you know you can do so you can die and be ok with that. Thinking about it in those terms helps me to remember what I am doing and why I am doing it and to be ok with it. It helps me shirk the shame and projection of others. It helps combat the “never enough” trap that sandbags my ability to be productive, to build on what I am creating and to pull myself together enough to buy some plants. I used to think I could save the world by myself and in moments of grandiosity, I still do but I lost any real hope along the way, in myself and in other people. Jane often references saving the world, like that is what she is doing, but she is doing it by believing in people. She understands the interconnectedness of us all. She knows the oil companies and the villagers who cutting down trees for firewood, that they aren’t going to just stop, they need an alternative for their livelihood. Chimp sanctuaries and forest corridors are like methodone clinics- better, necessary for now, but we’d prefer not to need them.

Maybe the white bread is getting to my head because this post has completely fallen apart. On another note, Ive stopped eating cheese, yogurt and milk and my diarrhea has decreased substantially. Doing my part, so.

SIPin

Writing emails sure is fun! Honestly even when I had a job that was over 50% emailing, I never really got sick of it but I also used to write long-hand letters for fun. People are different! Skydiver SLF, asked me why I was doing this, meaning blogging. Sometime its only because I know that my life-long and biggest fan of an aunt is reading; I am not under the illusion that I am creating a masterpiece but “What if someone wants to make a book about it?” Okay, sure I have had that fleeting, grandiose thought but I’m not Carrie Bradshaw and this isn’t a New York City sex column. I’m not going for a book deal, or followers, and I may even at times, incriminate myself with the ways I skirt around the SIP, like my plans to spend this summer on a SUP. From Sipin to SUPin, I’ll call it. It’s easy to stay 6-feet apart on a river!

I am creating a record, and the novel thought I had yesterday, while using the toilet, was that maybe I’ll get a kick out of reading this one day. Writing helps me remember in the moment and in the future and process and narrow in and, it turns out, make decisions. Writing about what was holding me back with the purchase yesterday, helped me move on from it, like a snagged finger nail, filed back to a smooth round edge. This is the magic of giving a problem attention.

Speaking of smooth round edges, I emailed iRocker, the SUP company with the best reviews and most reasonably priced boards. I was surprised that what started as an ask for a discount, turned into a full scale visualization on how to bring my skills and what I love to do together in a business idea. I need to figure how I am going to make a living! This has been on my to do list for about 13 years, since I graduated from college in 2007, in another recession. Just as I had paid off my student loans, exited a failed relationship, learned to make cocktails and secured a solid feature spot at the comedy club, just as I had started to believe that I could make something out of my quilted career history, here comes the Rona. But this time around, I know better. I refuse to be the chopped liver of our corrupt capitalistic governmentally longer. I will not internalize the failure of our systems this time around. I will figure out a way to make money, to build a career, to serve my community and I will come out on the other side of this because, we the people, especially the poor people, deserve it. This is our time and I for one, will not suffer this again. I am getting a SUP and you can guaran-godamn-tee, I’m gonna make something out of it.

In terms of the day to day and the coronavirus, I follow the NYTimes Daily podcast and they have had one guest, Donal G. McNeil Jr., a science and health reporter, on multiple times at critical points in the pandemic. He has been ahead of the game and listening to the early reports helped me be ahead of the game as well. I bought toilet paper on Coronavirus Wednesday and if you remember, Thursday was the beginning of the panic. On this Monday’s episode of the Daily, Donald givens some insight into how and where we might go from here. Reopening and coming back together is almost scarier than continuing to shelter-in-place. Its a mess and its not looking like things will change, or at least should change, anytime soon. I wrongly thought that warm weather would kill the virus and we’d get at least some relief and rejoin as a society in some ways, but who the hell knows? The heaviness of the situation bears down more fully. With the lack of clear guidelines and strong leadership, division seems to grow, even in like-minded people. I feel a current of shame getting stronger and circling in. I am wondering if I am imagining things, if I am doing something wrong by riding my bike on the greenbelt or hosting my germ bubble friends, one-at-time for dinner and sanitizing all surfaces before and after their visit. Are we starting into the phase where we turn on each other or have we been there am I just noticing it? Do we point fingers at each other because we can, because there is someone to take out our frustration on in the immediate. SUPing is not SIPing but it is social distancing so its ok, right?

Should I make some shame armor and learn to sew masks? That way I could be like, “Well I may have been SUPin through coronavirus summer but I donated homemade masks, made from my old t-shirts, to healthcare workers, what did you do?” Or I could just live life like all the executives of most major companies are do and say nothing while I live my best life and other continue to suffer. What do you you do when you are neither a hero, nor a complete asshole in times like these?

SUPin

If Friday was a salute to the week’s end and an escape into full weekend mode, Monday is for sure a drag back into the working world, even without working. There are people to catch up with, research to do, there is work to think about and something about the fullness of the weekend makes that feel good. There are words to be written and words to be read. I have to put the registration stickers on my car and email the manager of the apartment complex about my neighbor who has been letting her cat out in the middle of the night. There are the few germ bubble people I see preferably once per week to make plans wth and there are the work and friend and family to check in with. How is everyone doing?

Restless, full of heart and human.

My unemployment funds have been depostied. I got the stimulus and am expecting more support from the Cares Act. A couple of extended family members have sent me money and I have been receiving help with groceries from a local group. All the support feels amazing and not only can I pay my bills but I can afford a pair of summer kicks and a container of the good local salsa and a salmon filet. While I am tempted to keep treating myself, I also know I need to save for the impending recession. When my unemployment runs out or when I go back to work in the service industry things will be tight. At work, I’ll try to find things to clean and not worry about how I’ll make ends meet on long, slow nights. I imagine there will be a thawing period when things do reopen and that it will take at least a year if not more, for a lot of people to feel fully comfortable going out again, for exposure reasons but also probably for financial ones as well. I imagine that something like private suite karaoke will be way down on the list of must do’s; it was a new concept in a budding economy. I know I should save as much as possible right now but also, and I never thought I’d say this, I’m almost embarrassed, but yup, I want a SUP.

Thats right, stand-up paddle boarding. I want to float the river, standing up. I want to do yoga out on the ponds on that bored, I want to be that girl! I want to take it to the ocean and lay on it and feel the waves under me. Am I embarrassed because, as a canoe loyalist I used to make fun this impractical, bougie watercraft? Or is it that wanting anything at all embarrasses me? Wanting something and actually going after it implies you feel like you deserve to have what you want and that you are worthy of it. It doesn’t work if you are used to playing small.

When it comes to purchases I barely feel worthy of buying what I need. I have to reason with myself when I spend what I inevitably deem as too much, on anything. And I think that attitude is potentially part of the very reason why in the past I have made poor finical decisions. Any spending or financial decision made without confidence, is a poor one. So I am doing a lot of research and really thinking about how I would utilize this purchase, should I make it. How often would I get out, what would it be like? What are the benefits of the activity? What are the logistics involved and are there any unforeseen costs? But the real question I think I am wresting with deep down is- do I believe I deserve it? Have I worked hard enough and how do I measure that? Will I ever feel like I deserve to get what I want?

Beyond all that there is also an opportunity here to be smart with this time and money. To use both to move forward and invest in plan to work toward creating a life I want. Thinking about a life I want and how to create it… that is the reward of a lot of work. That is something I can feel confident in. That has potential, like the warmest of Mondays in Spring.

Its Spring and everything sounds like sex

Its the kind of Friday that has you searching the internet for Sufi poetry after a long riverside bike ride- two girlfriends chatting about the news and the future, like something you would see in Europe. Spring is really coming into her own, the tulips are bold and red, the sun warm, the air cold.

It the first Friday in the fullness of the season and collective blood begins to pump. Even with everyone working from home or not working at all it feels like the weekend is arriving and with it potential, however obviously unrequited its destiny be. I’m tempted to wear a dress. I give in to temptation.

I thought of Rumi because of a line I heard in my head while on the bike ride… “two paths diverge…” I don’t even know if that Rumi. He reminds me of one of my favorite poets, Hafiz another Sufi. What is Sufism? It’s “give all to the holy one,” a lot of do’s and don’t about life; its Persian. Wouldn’t it be nice to be told the right thing to do and then be able to just do it…

Tending two shops

Think that you’re gliding out from the face of a cliff
Like an eagle. Think you’re walking
Like a tiger walks by himself in the forest.
You’re most handsome when you’re after food.
Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks.
One is just a voice, the other just a color.

I know nothing about poetry, except that sometimes I read it and write it and that it, and that like stand-up is an antidote to a perpetual sad, self-absorbed voice. Poetry is slippery; I should have more respect for it. Poetry finds you like cats do, apparently. Poems seem to saunter into your life but actually you have go searching. You search, curiously, something deep below, barely in conscious view begs for connection and like an afflicting fairy, one appears.

Greedy

Oh smarmy treacly

June moon schmalz of it

The triple sundae

topped with everything

The hot plum pudding

brandied sauce of it

The soft fuzz on your belly

and ah those bony knees

and oh that mouth

and yes oh yes

this making love

the lick and tongue of it

-Maude Meehan, Chipping Bone

Happy Weekend :)

"Hello! Elaine, unemployment warrior queen, at your service"

My heart leapt when I saw a call come through with an unknown number and a 208 are code. I was driving but I picked up anyways and put the call on speaker, “This is Beth.”

“Hi! Is this Elizabeth?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Hi Elizabeth, this is Elaine from the Department of Labor.”

“Elaine! Yes, oh my god, thank you or calling! I’ve been waiting for weeks! Hi!” I couldn’t contain my excitement.

A strong giggle bubbled up over the road noise. “Is now a good time to answer some questions?”

Anything for you Elaine, immortal public servant super hero, anything.

Elaine is the kind of street level beaurecrat who has worked on the front lines of public service for so long that she not only knows how to help people, in and I am sure, around, the system but who has also likely been sustained in the work by her complete joy in doing it. 5.5 million people signed up for unemployment last week (in the US) and what has the department done here in Idaho? They have extended hours and hired more people. They have communicated expectations. And, now that I have received the call I can say, they have followed through.

Most of us are so used to systems not working that we have not even a sliver of faith let in it. There is an inherent lack of trust for bureaucracy as a whole, but actually it is people who make up our systems and you can’t possibly, accurately throw them all out with the dirty government bathwater. They aren’t some abstract machine. They are people. They are Elaines and Gerrys and probably a Dorris or two. Yes, government moves slow, especially if you compare it to business. But the ultimate goal of public servants are to serve people. Lets not forget that the ultimate goal of business is to generate profit. I think its no secret that we have all been subject to a quick service from a business that is initially satisfying but lacks sustainable support or any real value. Take social media for example. What a fucking scam.

It took four weeks from the time I filed my unemployment claim to when I got that call to resolve the pending issue which kept my claim from being fulfilled. With May’s rent and bills for April approaching I was getting nervous and increasingly tempted to call the department. But every Friday I got a letter from them which read something like- Keep filing, even if there is a pending issue, we will call you, you will get back paid, please don’t call us. So I had a choice. I could trust that, or I could contribute to the bogging down of the system, and get on the phone until I got the answer I wanted. Maybe I’d get through and best case scenario, I’d get my benefits a little sooner. I’d feel a little at ease, a little ahead of schedule. At what cost? Or I could have gotten through while in a panic and talked to someone who knew that I had not respected the department’s wished, who were sand-bagged by calls just like mine with people who were unreasonably out of their minds. That is a shit position to be in, one for the newbies, I bet, and those people are less inclined to help. Maybe this isn’t their calling, or they are new to the job and don’t know how to get around the system like vets, or maybe they are just less inclined to try because they know that you are a part of the problem. You don’t trust the.. Or could follow directions and wait and you could get Elaine.

I get really frustrated when I see people who can’t think beyond their own situation. Sometimes doing what is better for the greater good is also better for you- hey! Novel idea, I know. I also know I’ve crossed back into smugness here but I’m feeling entitled and damn near rich with all this governmental aid I’ve got coming.

Elaine asked me some deep questions about my self-employment. She really helped me through some things I’ve long struggled with, via clear-cut, routine questions. These are thoughts I have wrestled with for years. “Would you rather work for wages or for self-employment?”

“Oh gosh Elaine, I don’t know how to answer that, thats so deep.”

“Wages,” she mumbled, “Say wages.”

Wages it is. Queen! After going through all the details of stand-up work like how much I have made, how many hours I spend, why I wasn’t fully sustained by self-employemnt, Elaine said, “Girl! We need to get you in a bigger city!” When I told her I was sincerely thinking about full-time work she encouraged me to apply at the department. She said they had just hired twelve people and would be hiring more soon. I asked her how she like working there. She said, “I don’t have to come to work, I get to come to work. I’ve been here 11 years. I’m a supervisor and I love the people I work with.” She encouraged me to apply and at the end of our conversation she said. “Everyone here at the department will be looking out for your stand- up flyers,” (the ones I claimed as expenses for advertising,) “and Ill be looking for your application too.” What an angel.

We had one of those ends of conversations where you say goodbye more than once to the other person, lingering to draw out the interaction, for all its pleasantness. after we hung up I sat in my warm, parked car in a dopamine haze, daydreaming about how I would spend all my money and how life would be if Elaine adopted me. Its gonna be ok. We have the stimulus. We have the Cares Act. We have unemployment. And we have, Elaine, the immortal public servant, warrior queen, goddess, maker of dreams.

Remember when bulk foods were a thing?

I slept unusually late this morning and on the horizontal. One cat was stretched out on the right side of the bed, hip level and taking up her third and the other was directly across and in the same position, claiming an equal stake in territory. That left me with a small space between their tails which I could lay flat on my back, legs straight through. or else,But because I sometimes sleep like someone who has been hit by a bus, contorting my limbs on all directions, I ended up at the top half of the bed, arms and legs among the pillows. It was a poor economical use of bed space and I woke up with crick in my neck but strangely, almost bubbly, happy. I dreamed about outdoor festivals and space travel and best friends and I woke up thinking about what color I’d paint the world today.

This sort of excessive and uncomfortable sleep and buoyant feeling upon waking is something I forgot happens when coming out of a disassociation (need better words!) Today I felt both centered and scattered, connected back to belief, to ideas and inspiration, a plan, a path and yet I paced around my house interrupting one activity for another. Mid teeth brushing, I start washing dishes. Mid blog writing I took a shower. Mid watching Burlesque (with Cher and Christina Aguilera) I did yoga. Oh yeah, this is what happens too.

It takes a couple sleep cycles to return to baseline. (Words, words, words!)

I am down to liquid eggs, pickled okra, a carton of oj and tortillas. I’ve been living on apples and peanut butter, and left overs all week and my refrigerator is gloriously empty. The freezer is full and so is the cupboard so that leaves just the empty white canvas walls of fridge, beckoning me. Its says, “do the right thing, cut out dairy for good and stop the speculation on the root of your soft stools.” Its been two weeks since I’ve gone to the store and it was two weeks before that. Errands are stressful. Going out is confusing and jarring. Peoples eyes dart above their masks, its hard to breathe under mine, which is just a bandana or a scarf. I feel like a criminal just for being out.

But tomorrow is the day and so I am collecting recipes and making a shopping list on my chalkboard. The items on the list are arranged according to sections of the downtown Boise, Winco. One reason I stick to that store, besides it being generally less expensive than the others, is that I know where everything is. First you have to get past the quick buys- the seasonal stacks. Gram crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars are a summer favorite. Things like canned cranberries and stovetop stuffing are popular during the holiday season. Usually there are a stack of La Croiux I pull from and sometimes Ill cave and grab a box or two of Annie’s. But generally I just try to avoid spending to much time in “welcome” section for it is a slippery slope to Wildflower Cookies. The apples are might at the end of the tunnel, my focal point. Fruits, veggies, and tofu is over there along with the refrigerated salad dressing, like my favorite cesear. After that I swing into bulk for the grind your own peanut butter which is likely no longer in operation. Bulk foods are on Haitus right now. Sensible but yet another bummer.

I stop mid blog to send a text to someone who upon our first hang we happened to go grocery shopping together. She told me about how she gets all flustered and scrambled in there and ends up buying things she doesn’t need and forgetting the things she went in there for. The way she talked about it and the way she walked around the store in a short of disoriented daze, brought me back to my pre EMDR (or trauma specific treatment) days. I asked her if she had a lot of trauma if her life as a child and she said she had and well, there you have it. Something no one talks about, someone people suffer through alone- just getting through the freaking grocery store.

Anyways this is where in my shopping I always hit a snag. I usually proceed onto meat, deli, cheese section but then if I want any canned goods, toiletries, condiments or tortillas, I have circle back to the middle section and my path through the store drastically reduces in efficiency. Those are long aisles, often clogged. Hmmm…. thought. Maybe I’ll try to park my cart in the wine section, after groceries and walk those aisles without my cart, and before heading to bulk. Its just that he peanut butter can be a process and it calls. So from the meats, you pass the beer and go into dairy and juice, on the other side of that are your frozens and then you get into the cereal, baking and spice aisles. Once I get here, its like I am on the other side, I’ve crested the mountain. Plus this is the section that fuels creativity, so its like a reward to even be in those sections. After that its all down hill- just cat liter and household supplies like scrubbies and laundry detergent. Im sometimes tempted by the mini donuts in the bread aisle or a fresh loaf of sourdough from the bakery but generally, I just head for whichever checker looks the most familiar and start to add up my purchases in my mind. I usually cringe and cross my fingers that I haven’t gone over my budget.

Bagging my own groceries is one of my greatest pleasures (in grocery shopping) and besides they fact that they are employee owned, the real reason why I am a Winco loyalist. You get to control the conveyor belt! Ah the power. Bagging my own groceries is a spacial exercise that is like a warm shower for my brain The functionality of proper organization, on how you will store foods on the other end, is also incredibly satisfying. Balance the weight, put the boxy stuff in the larger bags, stack vegetables in green bags with the greens coming out the top. The rotisserie chicken belongs nowhere, so it usually gets its own bag. Besides for purely environmental reasons, I am surprised more people don’t bring their bags back for how much better they suit this process. Your own bags are easier to work with cause you know them. They likely hold more, their handles won’t break and if you have a variety of them, like I do, it makes organizing accrording to size even easier.

Ok, well I think I’ve run the risk here of seemingly like a complete neurotic nerd, and thats probably enough. Quick question, is animal print going to be forever out because Carole Baskins definitely killed her husband? Is it ok to wear a faded leopard print now as, like a statement? Still processing. P.s. Stay at home order extended until the 30th today for Idaho. Thank god but also, oh my god.