#77, wash your fucking hands
Maternity leave is not totally unlike a quarantine. Sure, you are “off,” but the coziness verges on cabin fever. You are far more concerned than usual about hand-washing. Leaving the house is a huge production requiring advance planning and gear.
And, you know, you have so so many dried beans, because you joined the Rancho Gordo bean club when the waitlist opened up (because that’s the kind of waitlist you’re on these days), you have literally seven pounds of adorable beans in your pantry, and a second freezer filled with meat share meat, and when the quarantine was first announced you were like, “Oh, we’ll finally eat all of those beans,” but then the quarantine actually begins and you don’t really feel like eating a ton of beans and braised meat, you want stale Christmas candy out of the back of a cupboard and you can’t meal plan beyond “handful of crackers from a Harry and David gift box and 3-year-old’s prewrapped individual slices of cheddar cheese” because even to self-cut slices of far superior cheddar cheese off the block in the fridge seems like too much effort and requires two hands. And the mail arriving each day is A Thing You Look Forward To Because What Might Be In It Today, Maybe Your First Bill From Your Refinanced Mortgage! And your projects, your many many project, go undone; the hanging of a feather-light Mixtile is apparently as insurmountable a task as carpentering your own built-in bookshelves, and that same spit rag from 2016 is still on the floor.
And then you realize that in a real quarantine, your older children would also be at home with you. In a real quarantine you wouldn’t have time to write this from a coffee shop because your constant companions would be not just a one-month-old (and yes, I got a little wistful that February has so few days because it meant my tiny tiny baby turned a whole MONTH old sooner than she would have otherwise) who, say what you will about her nighttime sleep and dampening effect on your ability to get things done, really does sleep for most of the day, but two giant children who need actual entertaining and a variety of snacks and the opportunity to expend energy.
And then you realize, crashing awake from a light daytime doze, that you might actually get to experience both of these at the very same time: Maternity leave and a school-closing quarantine. If that happens, you’ll get to see exactly what is like what. Wow! And you will be really sorry you spent all this time writing a newsletter instead of cooking beans.
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A Sequence of Thoughts on Purell
— Wow, this big bottle of Purell expired in 2016!! No surprise since we bought it in 2013 when Alice was born. We never used it up so let’s use it up now. I’m sure it’s still pretty good. Plus, washing your hands with soap and water is just as effective!
— It’s not that it can “expire” exactly, I’m sure, but let’s go buy some more, just in case. We won’t buy it at hoarding levels, we’ll just buy it at the responsible level. Leave some for other people. But also, try to think of places where other people might not have gone. You’re creative! You’re a writer! You’ll think of all the places that the other people didn’t think of. Hang on, kids, we need to run into Staples — ah. Nope. Man, that shelf is totally cleared out.
— Just walk into this CVS, all casual-like. Calm and cool, find that hand soap aisle without it being totally obvious.
“Can I help you find anything?” asks a friendly employee.
“Nope! Just looking around!” It’s wayyyyyyyyyy too embarrassing now to ask if they have Purell. The equivalent of saying, in 2017, “Hmm, this Moana music is pretty good. We should go see that show Hamilton!” The equivalent of saying, in 2020, “Hey, these Rancho Gordo beans are pretty good. I’m gonna sign up for that bean club.” You fool, there’s a waitlist.