Minda Goes West

 This is the week I discovered my 2020 breaking point: air. Breathable air. Wear a mask every time I set foot outside my apartment? Fine. Avoid public transportation and confine myself to places I can walk to in an hour or so? Fine. Keep shopping trips to a minimum? Fine. Read only ebooks because the library is closed?* Fine. Give up museums, and theaters, and restaurants? Fine. Stay inside with the windows completely closed because the air is trying to kill you? 2020 is the worst year ever.  It all started with an unusual lightening storm on a Sunday morning about a month ago. I sat on the balcony with my first cup of coffee and watched the storm. I was struck by the lack of rain--only a bit of light drizzle--but I didn't think of the danger inherent in lightening with no rain in a state with a Mediterranean climate that had a completely dry February. Not until a couple of days later, when I first heard about the fires. Hundreds of them. The air quality has been dicey ever si...

If we were sticking to the literal definition of "quarantine"--40 days--today would be the start of our fourth quarantine.* A good time to give a status update. * I can't remember if I started counting when the official shelter-in-place order started or when our family retreated into our apartment, which was a few days before the SIP.  What is life like for us in San Francisco right now? Transportation The Metro portion of Muni is still closed, and many bus lines are not currently running. Although the Metro is supposed to start again mid-August, it will be years, if ever, before all the bus lines return. Although we personally can complete all essential tasks without the Muni, the reduction in public transportation will affect our family's return to a more open new-normal, when the time comes. In general, we try to stay off the bus to leave room for riders on essential trips, but Youngest Kid did go to Golden Gate Park two days last week to help with an Eagle Scout p...

When I was young, my dad was a celebrity in our town. People said hi to him everywhere we went, and if we were out without him and someone learned he was my father, they often expressed envy. He'd even had his picture in the paper.  He was The Science Teacher with the Snakes.  (Photo of my dad in his early 30s, holding a boa constrictor with one hand and a baby with the other. The baby is reaching a hand toward the snake's head.) He was also--I suspect from the stories I heard and one memorable day where I hung out in his classroom after kindergarten--the sort of strict-but-entertaining-and-fair teacher I loved most, although I never attended a school where he taught.  Adult former students and parents of students greeted him cheerfully. Current and recent students said hi, but seemed stunned that teachers existed outside of school, which my siblings and I found highly amusing.  One of the things I appreciated most about my dad was that he was remarkably unconcerned ...

My sister, Kristi, introduced me to the Ten Things of Thankful blog hop several years ago, and she and my mom are both regular participants and current co-hosts (with others). I am not a regular participant because A) I post very infrequently, and B) I often have snarky or not-particularly thankful things I want to post about. But the blog hop is celebrating its seventh birthday this week, so I decided to join in this week. Of course, this week has been a tough week in a tough year, and so this list will reflect that. 1. I am thankful for the protests. Do I worry about large groups of people, many not wearing masks, increasing the number of COVID-19 cases in my city and potentially slowing down our reopening? Yes. Am I disgruntled by the vandalism and looting in my city? Yes. But I have seen how videos of the protests are changing the hearts and minds of some people in my life and making them more aware of the lived experience of others, and so I am thankful.  And some of the prote...

Writer Man and I both turned 49 this week. I made him an apricot and mascarpone tart. Youngest Kid made me a chocolate cake with white butter frosting. (I prefer white frosting to chocolate frosting.) In current events, it was a rough week. The US exceeded 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. San Francisco tightened the rules about wearing masks and delivered a depressingly drawn-out reopening plan.  My heart grieves.  The protests in San Francisco over the murder of George Floyd turned into looting yesterday evening, mostly around Union Square and Market Street downtown. I haven't spent much time in Union Square, but Youngest Kid and I shop at the Old Navy and the Westfield Mall that were looted, and I used to walk past the CVS and Walgreens on my way to work, back when we lived at the first apartment. Writer Man walked down that way this afternoon and saw some of the damage first-hand. I did some reading on Campaign Zero's Police ...

I heard a podcaster (Gretchen Rubin, I think) suggest making a list of things you miss in the quarantine, so here goes. Public transportation Some buses are still running, but I think we're still supposed to be saving them for essential trips. Since I can accomplish all my essential activities within walking distance of my apartment, I haven't been on a bus since February 27. I miss being able to jump on a bus and visit another part of San Francisco, and I miss being able to walk until my energy is drained, and then take a bus home.  Movie theaters Yes, we can watch movies at home, but I miss being part of a crowd that's reacting to the same story unfolding. Sipping a cappuccino in a real cup while reading and people watching in a cafe SF has so many great cafes and coffee shops. Or should I say, had? Libraries I am grateful for my library's ebook lending program, which is keeping me nicely stocked in reading material, but there are some books I want to read that...

So here we are, almost 60 days into quarantine. A word, WriterMan reminds me, that literally means 40 days. Although other parts of California are starting to open, the Bay Area remains firmly closed through May. Our own behavior is even more restrictive than what is allowed. We mostly eat food from our storage, supplemented every 2-3 weeks with a delivery from InstaCart and once a week or so with milk and eggs (and ice cream and wine) from the small store across the street. I've had one masked, unsuccessful trip the hardware store looking for bird seed, and one weekend we bought ice cream cones from a food truck parked at the marina. It was excellent ice cream. Other than that, we've stayed out of commercial establishments, not even taking advantage of takeout or food delivery services from those restaurants that are staying open. Well, except for the afternoon Youngest Kid and I spent in the pediatric ER a few days after my last blog post. He started complaining o...

There are a few pieces of good news, for which I am grateful. The Inspector Gamache novel revived my interest in reading, although I'm definitely happiest staying on the lighter side of my usual reading range. Mystery novels, witches and vampires, and fairy-tale-esque fantasy novels? Yes, please. Novels about suffering in the real world? Rain check, please. I spent the first week or so of quarantine bingeing TV shows, and reading feels much better. While we're on the topic of reading, thank heavens for Kindles and the ability to borrow ebooks from the library. We noticed hearts, peace symbols, and greetings on the windows of the buildings facing us half a block away, so Youngest Kid and I used pink sticky notes to post "HI" in the window facing them. Hopefully it brought a smile to someone's face. (Photo of the view through a window, showing sticky notes forming I and H.)  Due to my manager urging me to take Friday off, and church streaming the ser...

What a week. It felt like at least three. I know I'm not alone in this, and yet it seems odd. After all, we are all healthy. We have a comfortable place in which to shelter, with expansive views and some outdoor space. WriterMan and I can both work from home easily, and although our investments have taken a serious hit, we are not in any immediate financial difficulty. Our older kids are safe and secure where they are, as are our parents, siblings, and other family members, and we have many ways to connect with them. On the surface, our week was normal, or possibly more relaxed than usual. After all, there was no commute, no Boy Scouts, no errands. (We were already living like this, and the city of San Francisco joined us, by order of the Mayor who declared "shelter in place" effective 12:01 AM on Tuesday. On Thursday, that extended to all of California.) And yet, I'm exhausted, and have been pretty much all week, despite getting plenty of sleep on paper. So...

Fortunately, Friday was emotionally smoother than Thursday, although I still struggled to focus at work. Note to self: In the future, try to avoid putting a work trip with a fair bit of post-trip effort, a significant change in responsibilities (hello, learning curve!, hello, new team members!), and a global pandemic in the same two weeks. Thursday, the cascade of cancellations marked a clear Before and After. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, or 9/11. Or, I wonder, the London Blitz? Except instead of coming together as a community, we have to stay 6 feet away from each other. Friday, things had settled down a bit, perhaps because, with school officially cancelled, WriterMan home, and me working from home until further notice, I was not obsessively checking the news every 5 minutes. We are slowly figuring out the rules of this new life. For example, Youngest Kid needs to be up and dressed by 8:30 each weekday morning. An hour of reading a day is mandatory. And as long as the ...

Hi. It's me. Yes, I'm still here, although I haven't blogged in so long that I literally forgot how to create a new post and bumbled around for an embarrassingly long time before I figured it out. It's been a little over a month since the coronavirus started appearing in the news here. WriterMan was quick to understand that this could be a Big Thing and placed our first apocalypse order with Amazon the first week of February, when I was away on a work trip. Over the past month, we have slowly built up about a month's worth of food and basic supplies. Since we don't have a car and I have to transport all the groceries back in my little shopping cart, we were not at Costco, piling carts high. But I did buy a little more at the grocery store each visit, and there was a definite uptick in the Amazon deliveries. We've watched the cruise liner in quarantine in Japan, and the outbreak in Washington, and the first cases around Sacramento. We've seen the su...

Youngest Kid and I spent this weekend at a church retreat at Bishop's Ranch, a couple of hours north of San Francisco. It was nourishing in many ways. First, it was nice just to get out of the city. We chose city life very deliberately, and I love living in San Francisco, but I am discovering that getting out into nature every month or two is a key part of happy, healthy city living. This really hit home for me in October, when I stayed with a coworker one night to save myself three hours of commuting between Day 1 and Day 2 of a workshop at another office. The coworker and her wife live out in the country, and as I listened to the crickets chirping through the open window as I drifted off to sleep, my soul relaxed a piece of me I didn't realize had been tense. The ranch is far from being in the wilderness. It's adjacent to a Clover Dairy farm--our noses were well aware of that at times--and the nearby hills are covered in vineyards. But there is no city noise, growin...

Today I called Progressive to cancel our car insurance, because we no longer have a car to insure. My husband sold both our vehicles back in Vermont before flying out to join me here in San Francisco. Even though I've been living carless for two months, and even though I know we can choose to buy a car if being without ends up not working for us, it is strangely unnerving not to have a car. Or car insurance. And I find the fact that I am unnerved unnerving.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, our moving pods will be dropped off in front of the house next door in the morning, and the teenager we've hired to help us unload them will show up at one. We'll unload the pods and assemble at least the beds before WriterMan leaves for Vermont early Wednesday morning. But so many things could go wrong. For example: The SUV with Oregon plates currently parked in front of one of our temporary No Parking signs (posted by the city over the weekend) could still be there when the pods arrive. The pods could not arrive. The teenager could not show up. The teenager could show up but not be strong enough for the three of us (he, WriterMan, and I) to haul the heavy furniture up the two flights of stairs to the front door. Beautiful mango-wood table, I am looking at you. One or more of us could injure ourselves hauling said furniture up said stairs. Given WriterMan's history of sprained ankles and my history of breaking my foot on stairs, this i...

I arrived Sunday afternoon, and it's now Wednesday morning. In no particular order: There is a palm tree on my street! I know, I know, this should not be shocking. And yet somehow, it is. There is another person with my same name living in San Francisco. Well, it's possible we have different middle names that start with the same initial, but I know the middle initial is the same. I discovered this when getting a public library card, so at least the other me is also a reader. The librarian, an immigrant judging by her accent, asked me if my first name was common. No, no, it isn't. Card management is going to be a thing. In addition to the usual credit card, ID, and debit card, I now need to manage my work ID and the pass that lets me past the building lobby, as well as my Clipper card (for riding the Muni). I think a different wallet might be in order to help me easily access the Clipper card while keeping the others less available. I'm also surveying coworkers on ...

Tonight was Youngest's graduation from elementary school, which is a thing here. It's held in the evening. The kids process in. There's a speech, and slide show. Each name is called, and the kid walks forward to shake hands, get a diploma, pose for a picture. Afterwards, there's cake. "Mom, do we have to move?" Youngest has a good group of friends--six boys who get along well, have fun, and challenge each other. A month ago, it looked like they were scattering to different middle schools, which was making the move a slightly easier sell. But now they will all--except for Youngest and one kid who is a grade behind--be at the same school. I know that middle school years are a time when many elementary school friend groups implode or explode or silently drift apart. Maybe it's better to leave before that happens, escaping the confusion and hurt feelings and the pain of watching it fall apart. But at 12, Youngest doesn't know that's probably ...

WriterMan pointed out to me that we are operating under a conservation of stress. We can apparently only stress effectively about one thing at a time, but there are many items on our Things to Stress about list, so as soon as we resolve one stressful situation, we get only a brief reprieve before we start stressing about the next thing. First, we were stressing about whether we were going to move. We found out the move is on. Yay! So then we stressed about finding a place to live. We signed a lease. Yay! Then we stressed about one of our twins, who had yet to find a job for after graduation and didn't seem to be looking. Then he found a job. Yay! We are currently stressing about choosing a moving method and date. Driving the moving van ourselves? Filling pods and having them moved? Or tossing frugality to the wind and hiring someone else to do the whole shebang? Stay tuned for the next episode of Stressing with Minda.

Moments before we left for the airport last Tuesday, we received a phone call from the landlords of our top apartment, telling us that we could have it. While WriterMan talked to them about the logistics of getting the lease signed (via email, once we were back in Vermont), I danced around the hotel room and Youngest looked glum. At twelve, it's hard to understand the value of sticking to a somewhat arbitrary budget, and he really liked the budget-busting option. I am relieved to have the question settled, in part because I was not looking forward to the pressure of picking out an apartment on my own, which was our backup plan. It also helps in the decluttering process to be able to picture the space where we will be living and the amount of storage available to us there. I'll share more about our new space once we are there. For now, I'll just say that it is one floor of a house in a quiet neighborhood.

This weekend was the first time Youngest has been to San Francisco, and his first time in California since he could walk, so we wanted to make sure he had some fun in between apartments. We saw the sea lions on Fisherman's Wharf. We climbed the 16th Street Tiled Steps. We visited the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park. We dipped our toes in the Pacific at Ocean Beach. On Monday, having exhausted all of the apartments we could get appointments to see in the areas we wanted, we drove down to Santa Cruz to enjoy the beautiful sunny day. On the way, we walked among the redwoods at Henry Cowell State Park. In Santa Cruz, we walked along the boardwalk, rode the wooden roller coaster built in 1924, and explored the tide pools.

WriterMan, Youngest, and I spent the long weekend apartment hunting in San Francisco. We saw 13 properties over three-and-a-half days, and would have seen more if the listing agents had returned our phone calls. There was the beautifully staged, stamp-sized apartment that WriterMan and Youngest fell in love with on the second day that had extremely inadequate storage and a tiny living-dining space that couldn't hold a couch. I had an anxious hour or so until WriterMan finally agreed that it really was too small. Youngest remains unconvinced. There was the house on the busy street that seemed great to me, until we got to the shared back yard and saw the junk pile, including a queen mattress. WriterMan noticed that the carpets were stained and smelled of cat. There was the Oliver Twist apartment, which had a shared wooden staircase that reminded us of the movie. The kiss of death for that one was no parking in a very busy neighborhood. Youngest loved the staircase. (We disc...