A Long Drive

Alyssa’s car has been acting up lately. Tom thinks it might be the fuel pump. Sometimes, it just won’t start. The battery is fine, it has a spark, it just…won’t start. After a couple of tries, it usually fires up but it can be very frustrating when you’re somewhere that is not home and your car isn’t starting.

I supposed it’s a rite of passage to have to deal with an unreliable car. We’ve all been there, right?

My first car, a 1975 Gran Torino Elite was a wild ride. By the time I finally retired that thing (around 1990) I had to have a bottle of gasoline in the backseat of the car so I could prime the carburetor each time I wanted to start it. I couldn’t fill it up with gas because there was a hole in the top of the gas tank and every couple of days I had to top off the power steering fluid.

Yeah. Those were fun days.

But…because we can, we’re looking for a different car for Lyss. She has a lot going on and we want her to be safe while doing all the things.

Tom started searching on FB marketplace. He found a car with 90,000 miles that was for sale for a decent price. It was in Huntington. He contacted the seller, who told him there were no issues with the car. He gathered some cash and away we went.

Okay, that sounds simple enough. It wasn’t quite so simple. We left at about 5:15 on a Tuesday. Olivia and I had already done her social studies homework and her spelling homework at home. But we took her math worksheet with us so she could finish it in the car. We had a 73 mile trip ahead of us.

I sat in the backseat with Olivia so I could help her with her homework. For what it’s worth, she did it mostly by herself. Go Liv!

Alyssa sat up front with Tom, who drove. Even though he’s very familiar with Huntington, Tom had Lyss use the GPS on her phone; which was the first mistake.

Wait, the GPS was the second mistake. The first mistake was even bothering with this car, though maybe that’s not fair, the pictures posted on FB marketplace were excellent pictures, they just didn’t tell the whole story.

Anyway! We drove, Olivia did homework, Alyssa studied for two exams (physics and anatomy) and I sat back and enjoyed not having to drive.

We followed the directions given by Alyssa’s phone…sort of. Tom did make poor Siri recalculate the directions a couple of times. But whatever.

We finally made it after driving for an hour and fifteen minutes. Tom pulled into the driveway of an out of the way farm. There were about a thousand chickens running around along with at least fifty cats and kittens.

There was only one dog loping around with a woman and two men. One of the men was in filthy shorts than hung to below his knees, socks that came up to mid-calf and a greasy T-shirt.

Tom got out of the car to go talk to the dudes about the Fort Taurus they had for sale.

The girls and I watched the chickens. At one point, a rooster attempted to accost one of the hens. Olivia saw the action and said with glee, “They’re going to do it!”

Let’s remember, she’s 13 and so is surrounded by 13 year old boys. Yikes.

The hen did not consent and so nothing untoward happened beyond the rooster making overtures that were firmly turned down.

After about twenty minutes Tom and one of the dudes got in the car that was for sale and went for a drive.

It was at this point that I realized that Tom had taken the keys to my car with him.

Let that sink in. He drove away with a stranger (neither of them wearing a mask!) with MY keys. The girls and I were left in my car with no way to leave if the need to leave happened to arise.

I told the girls to lock their doors. We continued to watch the chickens and the kittens. One chicken hobbled toward the car and we realized she was missing most of her right foot. It was so weird and creepy.

The dude in the filthy shorts stalked around the farmyard. The woman and her dog went about their evening business.

The car continues to get hotter and hotter. It wasn’t exactly hot outside but with three of us in that enclosed vehicle, breathing our hot breath and occasionally laughing because of the insanity of the situation, the windows steamed and the interior temperature rose.

Tom and Dude 1 came back. They talked a little more. The girls and I cracked our doors open, scaring some chickens and getting fresh air.

Tom came to the car and told Alyssa she should drive it.

Then Tom and Alyssa got in that sketchy car and drove away, WITH MY KEYS AGAIN. This time, they left just me and Liv in my car, in that farmyard with BOTH of the creepy dudes hovering.

I felt like we were writing the first few pages of a horror story.

We locked the doors again and waited.

And waited.

And I got antsier and antsier. Olivia announced that she had to pee but she was going to wait until we got home to do so. Smart girl. (Spoiler: we took her to a grocery store in Huntington; she didn’t have to wait another two hours to relieve herself.)

Tom and Alyssa FINALLY got back from their little drive. Alyssa returned to the car, where she declared, “It’s a no.”

Tom continued to talk to the dudes, who tried to convince him that this car was totally a most excellent buy for our teenage daughter. It had a WOOFER in the trunk.

Tom told them Alyssa wasn’t quite the woofer type.

Then he told them that the pictures they’d posted did not show dents in the hood, the broken cruise control or the weird cobbled dash.

They argued that the cruise control being broken didn’t make the car undrivable.

Okay. I mean, that’s technically true but when you’re thinking about spending money in the four digits, you want something better. Or, if nothing else, you don’t want to feel like you’d been taken by some well-angled pictures.

Tom finally pulled himself away from the owner (though, apparently, the guy selling the car was actually the grandson of the owner…which…okay…that’s sketchy as hell) and his mechanic friend (that was the dude in the filthy clothes) and made his way back to the car.

We left as quickly as we could and made our way to town where we all used the facilities in the local grocery store and then went through the drive-thru at McD’s.

Tom drove into the McD’s parking lot and started to hand Alyssa a pad of paper, telling her to write down exactly what she wanted.

I offered, “You want me to do the ordering?”

He took me up on that offer so fast you’d think he was shy. Nah, dude just really hates ordering at the drive-thru.

So he took my place in the backseat, I took the driver’s seat and ordered food for my family without a single word being written down.

Tom was stunned by the low, low price of the food but then realized I hadn’t ordered anything for myself. My jaw had ached all evening and I just couldn’t bring myself to eat anything. I offered to drive us home so he could eat.

We made it home safely and were in bed a half hour later. It was an exhausting trip, is what I’m saying.

Welcome to Junior High

New year, new teacher, new masks, new everything.

We finally said goodbye to spring break after twenty two weeks.

Obviously, spring break morphed into summer break and here we are in August, masking up and starting a new year.

This year kicks off Olivia’s first in junior high and Alyssa’s last in high school.

Since Liv transitioned from elementary to junior high, she’d got an all new teacher. She worked with Dr. C for three years and was very comfortable with her. Now she’d in Mrs. H’s intervention class.

It’s going to be fine.

Olivia was a little nervous the week or so before school started. She was picking at her fingers, not sleeping well, and flapping her left hand more than ever.

The school had canceled the open house, which usually takes place a day or two before school starts in an effort to keep the number of people entering the building to a minimum.

But! They did have a 7th grade orientation two days before the first day of school. That was nice. It explained how junior high will be different from elementary school. It described the day and how the students were responsible for their own behavior, etc.

Okay. Sure. Fine.

Olivia and I got to meet her teacher, which was great. The original plan, way back in February of 6th grade, was to have Mrs. H come to Dr. C’s class and meet Olivia in a safe, familiar setting. Then, in the last few weeks of school (which were, obviously, spent at home with me as the teacher’s aide) Dr. C was going to take O down to Mrs. H’s classroom and let O get used to it little by little.

Well, none of that happened. 2020 went to hell in mid-March and we’re all still on the broken escalator trying to climb back out. Sadly, the people in front of us haven’t figured out that a broken escalator just becomes STAIRS and we all need to just start climbing.

Instead, Olivia came home from spring break and never left the house again until August 17, which is when we attended 7th grade orientation and met her teacher.

Obviously, that’s an exaggeration. But still…kind of accurate.

And yet, it’s going to be fine. We’re all in the same boat. All the kids went home on the afternoon of March 13th and didn’t step foot in the school again for twenty two weeks.

I’m rambling. I’m nervous for her. I know she’ll be fine but I want to fast forward about four weeks and REALLY KNOW she’s fine.

Just wait until next year at this time when Alyssa’s off to college. That’s going to be a fun ramble, isn’t it?

Home School

Over the holiday weekend, I found out that one of my cousins, a lovely young woman with two beautiful daughters, will be homeschooling her girls this fall. She’d already made the decision years ago not to send her older daughter to public school. S had gone to a private Catholic school since kindergarten. I believe she’d be going into fourth grade this coming fall.

E (the cousin) told her mom that she just wasn’t comfortable sending either one of her daughters back to school. Her younger daughter, A, will be five in December, so she’d have been home another year anyway. But she’s ready to learn. So E’s going to devote her days to educating her girls.

Good for her.

Seriously.

She’s already a stay-at-home mom so this won’t be a hardship on their family. It will be fine.

I also found out that my oldest step-son’s wife (does that make her my step-daughter-in-law?) will be homeschooling their three children as well.

Tom visited with J the week before holiday weekend and J told him they’d gone back to church a couple of times after the initial quarantine but the sight of everyone hugging and shaking hands made J choose not to go back and now they’ll be keeping their kids out of school too.

Again, good for them. I hope it works for them and they get a lot out of it.

After Tom told me all this, I gave it a moment of thought and declared, “All I know for sure is that homeschool is NOT a good option for our family.”

He laughed and agreed. Then he said, “Honestly, I don’t think it’s a good idea for a lot of kids who are going to be homeschooled in the near future.”

I didn’t touch that one. I may be married to the ringmaster, but that is NOT my circus and so I don’t get to judge the monkeys.

What I do know is that my little weirdos would have been even weirder if I hadn’t sent them school where they’ve been socialized into semi-functioning human beings over the past decade or so.

Okay, so the big one has come a long way. I mean, she works with the public, she is in a long-standing relationship, she has lots of friends, she performs in musicals and takes solos, both vocal and flute, to contest each year. She runs track and is the section lead of the woodwinds in her high school band. She tries out for soloes in her choir. She takes voice lessons to which she drives herself, pays the lady herself and practices without nagging.

But let me tell you, she would not be this outgoing and vivacious if she’d been stuck me day in and day out during her more formative years. No. She’d still be stuck to my side, letting me speak for her (and yes, that is one of my biggest flaws, I answer for my kids rather than let the silence get awkward.)

Honestly, she still gets squirmy if you suggest she go through a drive thru as the actual driver and have to speak, OUT LOUD, into the intercom and order something. She doesn’t like to order her own food when out and about. She wouldn’t call Walmart and ask if they have a specific phone in stock when her phone was dying. So, yes, she’s still weird (adorably weird but still) and while I love every weird cell in her body, I know school has been SO good for her.

And don’t even get me started on the little one. I mean, damn, can you even imagine that one without the last eight years of formal schooling? Yikes. And honestly, I can see regression setting in now that she’s been out of school for sixteen (16!) weeks. I feel for her new teacher this fall. Not only will she be getting to know Olivia for the first time, she’ll be getting to know an Olivia who has been out of school for almost 22 weeks. I better get that woman a few gift cards just to mellow out the start of the year.

All this to say, yeah. Good for all you homeschooling moms. I’ll be over here investing in masks and hand sanitizer and sending my darlings back into the cesspool that is the public school system.

In our case, the fear of germs is trumped by the benefits of socialization. I realize not everyone has the same priorities and that doesn’t make any of us are wrong (except 45, the creepy-ass dude whose name is the present tense of one the verb in the first sentence in this paragraph. Yes, he’s wrong ALL THE TIME. No matter the subject, he is wrong.)

The Children

These are trying times, no?

Yes. Yes, they are trying.

The governor of Ohio closed schools for the first time on March 12. The last day the girls were in school was Friday, March 13. They came home with Chromebooks.

That first ‘closing’ was supposed to be for three weeks. The tentative restart date was April 6.

Unless you live under a rock (can I move in with you?) you probably know that that date has been pushed back to May 1 and there are murmurs about it school not resuming at all for the rest of this school year.

We’re all under a ‘shelter in place’ warning. Of course, that doesn’t mean a thing to me, I go to work every single damn day anyway.

And guess what? I’m not a doctor or a nurse. I’m NOT important and yet here I am.

But my family is at home and that television is on all the time. And it’s all news, or rather, it’s nothing new. It’s all about death and destruction and illness and scary shit and Olivia is losing her mind.

I recently got home on a Tuesday and she was drawing at the kitchen table. Which is nice. She was wearing a purple one-shouldered dress. She looked lovely and yet…she’s haunted right now.

By 6:30, she’d worked herself into quite a lather.

She wanted to write her Gram a letter but didn’t know what to write. She is bored and tired and stressed and at 13, she doesn’t know how to handle her emotions.

I fed her some dinner. She cried.

I ran her a bath. She cried.

I washed her hair. She cried.

We called her Gram. She cried.

I gave her some hot tea and a cookie. She felt a little better.

She’s scared. She’s young and fragile and scared. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want her mom or her dad or her sister or her Gram to die.

I hugged her and told her we’re doing all we can so that none of us will die.

I finally asked her if she’d like to me to take a couple of days off work to spend with her.

That brightened her up.

We made plans for those days. We planned to go outside and draw on the driveway with chalk, go to the school and pick up pies that had been ordered months ago for the prom that will probably not happen (have I mentioned how glad I am that I didn’t buy a prom dress yet?) After we pick up the pies, we planned to take the ones my mom ordered to her, maintaining our distance, of course.

The, the next day, our big plan was to go through the McD’s drive-through in Montpelier. Mama needs her coke and Olivia needs to get out of the house, away from the house, even if for a little while.

Tough times, indeed.

Please Leave Your Babies at Home!!!

Everyone in the entire world is on lockdown, right?

Or, we’re supposed to be, right?

My place of employment is still open and so I’m still going to work. Sigh. I feel guilty every single day as I drive away from my home.

I’ve gone to the grocery store once a week, right after work, since this all began (two whole weeks ago…has it really only been that long?)

The first week, right after Ohio closed schools, my mom, Olivia and I went to lunch and the grocery store as usual. We also went to Hobby Lobby for some sewing supplies.

It was insane; not Hobby Lobby, that place was the epitome of calm and collected.

Applesbees wasn’t too bad either. They’d taken all the advertising tents and condiment trays off the tables for cleaning and business was kind of slow but it was only 11:30, so who knows how much busier it got that day.

But Walmart…OMG. Seriously.

The shelves were picked over. There was no pasta, no ramen, no potatoes. Obviously, there was no toilet paper. We didn’t even need toilet paper and yet…it was daunting to know that it wasn’t available had we needed it.

I got most of what we needed and we went to Meijer to see if they had potatoes. They did. We got a small bag. Oh, Meijer also had toilet paper that day. We didn’t actually need any, but I bought two 8-roll packages anyway. Oh. Wait. Does that make me a toilet paper hoarder? Yikes.

The next week, I went to Walmart on Friday after work. Well, wait. I actually left work that Friday at about 3:30 in hopes of beating any rush.

My early departure was in vain. There were STILL no potatoes, ramen, pasta or toilet paper but also, there was no bread whatsoever. Milk and eggs were plentiful but the Country Crock shelves were empty as were the Pillsbury biscuit shelves.

I went to Meijer AGAIN, this time for the bread. Again, Meijer had plenty of bread and they had three packs of toilet paper. These were labeled as ‘RV toilet paper.’ I have no idea what that means. I did NOT get toilet paper that day. Look at me, letting go of my hoarding ways.

Anyway…

This past week, week two of the girls being off school but it feels like we’re heading into week three, if you know what I mean, I went on our grocery run on Thursday after work. I kind of wanted to see if the shelves are different on a Thursday than they were on Friday.

There were potatoes! And toilet paper! Oh, and pasta and bread were on the shelves too. Alas, still no ramen. What the hell?

Ahem.

So I got my usual groceries.

As I made my way through the store, getting the things on my list, I came across no fewer than three families, FAMILIES, in that store.

And by family, I mean, there were two parents and AT LEAST two kids. Two of these families had a toddler and an INFANT with them.

What I want to know is WHY COULDN’T ONE OF THOSE PARENTS HAVE STAYED HOME WITH THOSE KIDS? I know. I need to calm down and stop screaming at you.

But people, seriously!

I’m so freaking resentful that I, and I alone, have to go out and work and buy groceries. I would give anything to be ‘sheltering at home’ with my family.

But I’m out there, going to work, buying groceries, getting gas for my car, blah blah freaking blah and these people are taking their BABIES out in this. Why? Why would you do that?

Sure, we’re all going a little stir-crazy. (Okay, I’m not but that’s because I don’t get to be ‘stuck’ at home.) But is that really reason enough to take your INFANTS out to a place like Walmart where germs are crawling all over the place, people are coughing and sneezing and it’s just GROSS.

Those poor babies!

Why, yes, it does appear that I’m becoming a germaphobe.

On the Bright-ish Side

On the Bright Side

-With the girls out of school, I only have to pack my own lunch each evening.

-I only have to get myself ready for work each day. Lest you think this means I look more put-together since I’m not spending at least five minutes braiding Liv’s hair each morning, oh, no, no, no. That’s not the case at all. What it really means is that I hit the snooze button at least one more time each morning.

-Olivia has chores now. CHORES. She gets to use a Clorox wipe(s) and clean the doorknobs, light switches, toilet handles, stair rails, etc. All the places in the house that are frequently touched by everyone and anyone entering the house.

-I am not the ‘work-at-home’ parent and as such, I don’t have to be the one who nags and nags and nags Olivia to eat her lunch, only to be asked ten minutes after lunch is over if she can have a snack. The brightest of bright sides.

Flashing Back

Author's note, this was written in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Social distancing is all well and good but some of us still have to go to work.

I do not have a job that can be done from home. Sadly.

But hey, you know what? I’m lucky I have a job that I’m still able to do during this time of crisis.

Alyssa came home from work on Sunday, March 15th and said that the governor of Ohio had declared that all restaurants and bars were to close. She did say that her managers had said that if employees were scheduled to work, they should still show up, they could clean, help with the attached convenience store and the drive-thru would still be open and food would need to be prepared for that.

So.

Walmart was out of potatoes and ramen; and, obviously, toilet paper. Meier, located less than a mile from Walmart, had plenty of potatoes, 15 packages of beef ramen and some toilet paper. They were limiting the amount of toilet paper each person was allowed to buy, but that was understandable.

We didn’t even need toilet paper. But we did need potatoes and ramen.

Speaking of ramen, I get that with kids home from school for at least three weeks, we all have to feed them as conveniently and cheaply as possible. I mean, that’s actually why I was even looking for it. It’s one of the few foods that Olivia will eat with minimal nagging.

We decided that this first week off school is going to be treated as spring break since that was the original schedule.

But the following weeks, ugh. I don’t envy Tom and yet, I kind of do. He’s going to have to police screen time and make sure that Olivia does actual school work while she’s off during these coming weeks. I pointed out that we have her daily scheduled posted on our fridge. She needs to adhere to that, even if it’s a loose adherence. I suggested that she try and keep to the schedule at least half way. As in, if, when she’s in school she’d do math for 40 minutes, at home she should do 20 minutes.

Recess! Get that child outside. She can’t be allowed to sit on her butt for twelve to fifteen hours a day while she’s home from school. She needs to get outside and run, or just sit and let the wind blow off the germs.

She has gym two days a week. I think Tom could very well institute a PE period at home. In fact, I think he’d be good at this.

Alyssa could help Liv with the other ‘specials’ which include art, music, and technology.

I’m just rambling here but these are scary times. I’ve read enough apocalyptic fiction to know that the world can go to hell overnight. But I also know that we have a lot of precautions being implemented so that doesn’t happen.

We’re still going to the eye doctor and the dentist. We’re still going to the grocery store. We’ll go through the drive-thru for food because that’s the only option these days and that’s okay.

Let’s all do what we can to remove the panic while still keeping our distance and not gathering in crowded areas.

Olivia’s hands are chapped from over-washing but these days, is there any such thing? I’ve slathered her hands with Mary Kay satin hands, a very waxy substance that helps her skin retain its own natural moisture.

And on that note…