THE STAPLES TWISTER GAME

I am in Staples (not because I want to be; I need ink since I am now working from home).  I go to Staples at an hour when few people will be there, I wait until it's boiling hot midday to cut down on even more of a crowd, and I park way the hell out in East Bumfuck to keep away from people.  I even secure my mask before getting out of my car because, hey, I'm trying to be mindful here.

Then I enter the store.

I will say this: My local Staples really knows how to tape down arrows.  The arrows on the carpeted floor are colorful, symmetrical, and obvious.  Great, I tell myself, this is going to be easy as pie.  (I honestly don't know why people say this because, quite frankly, making pie from scratch is complete and utter bullshit difficult.)

I just need to go straight up the aisle and to the left.  That's where all of the ink is.

But, wait.  The arrows are on the wrong sides of the displays in the aisles.  That's right.  To go straight ahead, instead of keeping to the right, I have become British and must swerve into the left lane to go straight.  The left lane is inbound, and the right is outbound, despite the fact that the right side of the aisle leads directly to the "in" door and away from the cash registers.

Okay, I get into the British lane then try to turn left to get to the ink.  But wait -- all lanes are outbound, not inbound.  I circle the cell phone aisles, then the scanner aisles, but still, all lanes go right and backward; none go left and forward.

I am essentially screwed.

There are people in the store, so I tap into my inner Bond.  James Bond.  Suavely I maneuver to the left, do a standing barrel roll, pivot to make it appear that I am actually going to the right, side-step, back-up (without making a beeping noise to divulge my location), and finally come out along the ink wall.

Excellent!

Wait.  No.  Damnit!  I am in front of Epsom ink, but I need Canon ink.

I look to my right.  Yes!  I see it!  I see it all! An entire wall of Canon ink!  Except . . . except . . . except that the ink is to my right and inbound, and the arrows on the floor are pointing to the left and outbound.

At this point I become George Carlin in my brain and start mumbling the seven words you cannot say on television, all while stealthily inching toward Canon country.  By the time I reach motherfucker, I am standing by the ink that I need, and no one is the wiser.

I have to circle the paper and the printers in order to get away from the ink, and at one point I am going around displays over and over again like some kind of sick carousel ride of idiocy.  Finally I simply say, "The hell with it," (out loud and without caring who hears me) and walk on the wrong arrows in the wrong direction toward the cashiers.

I leave with my ink, but I leave my dignity back in the store.  I have always sucked at Twister, and these colored arrows reek to high heaven of contorted movements that are probably for the entertainment of the Staples staff.

The final kicker is that when I walk way back, way out yonder to my car, some moron pulls out of the parking area as if Corona is chasing him.  He nearly runs me and my ink over right in the lot.

Come on, people.  I am wearing the damn mask.  The least thing you can do is trust me to walk on the right (like a normal American would) and not make me play a giant game of Where's Waldo's Exit Strategy just to make a quick trip to a store.

COVID WALK MISADVENTURE (AND RANT)

All I am trying to do is take a walk.  A simple walk.  I am trying to take a simple walk without having to wear a mask, breathe in my own C02, and cause myself to pass out on the sidewalk and crack my skull when I keel over. 

That's all.  Just a walk.

I am up early enough.  It's Sunday, so maybe people will be sleeping in, like they apparently do every day of the week now because days don't matter anymore.  I decide to head up the street that's relatively quiet and has sidewalks on both sides of the road.  Bear in mind that if a person, whether walking or jogging or bike riding, comes within six feet of anyone else for whatever reason, it will be a $300 fine, and the world is full (and I mean FULL) of people ready to narc you right out like they be part of the po po.

I leave my house, turn left, and want to go right at the crosswalk.  Nope.  No can do.  There's a car waiting, and the driver's window is open.  Must turn left.  After the car goes by, I swing back around, and proceed the way I wanted to in the first place.

But, wait.  Someone is digging up around a tree on her property at the sidewalk line.  Okay, time to cross the street.  As I cross the street, a family comes down the other sidewalk, gets within four feet of the gardener, and my brain starts screaming, "Watch out! $300 fine per person!  That's a $1,200 'hello' right there, folks.  Run!  Run from the po po!"

As my eyes search for any narc with a phone (they're everywhere -- I crap you not), I realize that there is a woman I shall soon be overtaking at my pace versus her snail's pace.  There are dog walkers coming toward us both.  She veers off into the school parking lot and I dash into the middle of the street, pass the dog walkers, and, as I retake the sidewalk, see Slow Woman, who has suddenly decided to become Fast Woman, marching right at me down the sidewalk coming from the school parking lot.

Oh, Hell no, Bitch!

I pick up my pace and dare her, actually worm over the the left side of the egress and will her to come within an arm's length of me. 

Bitch, I will own you.

I huff and puff up the hill because now not only am I starting to sweat from the pace, but I am sweating from zigzagging in several directions and hopping in and out of the street.  I get up to the top of the hill, hoping to swing left then right and take a quick but quiet stroll through the small cemetery (and say hello to Harriet and the Stowe family), but, no, there's a family there with kids running loose and another in a stroller. 

I give them some lead time, but they decide to stop and rearrange baby bottles and check on diaper rash and talk about the merits of early college admission for their infant and toddlers.  However, the toddlers are running amok every which way, and there is no way I can pass them without coming within six feet of at least half of them, so I again swerve wide of my target, jog quickly to avoid a car that is careening down the semi-closed street right toward the family members (who are no longer my concern because they prevented me from my cemetery stroll).

I decide to hustle my arse up the ramp and head into the academy quad.  I stand briefly in front of the shuttered art gallery while a huge sign waves in the breeze, hanging lazily from the colonnaded front entry: Come see this famous photographer's limited-time exhibit...  Oh, geez, bummer, man.  No, for real.  You finally get yourself a show, and everything shuts up tighter than a politician's fist full of money. 

I continue to walk, but wait for it -- at the crossing of the campus sidewalks, there are people walking, jogging, running, biking, sunbathing, and more.  How am I going to conquer this?  It looks like trains approaching North Station while praying that the switchers are paying attention to the tracks.

With a few feints left, right, forward, back, then a fast shoot-through, I am able to avoid the people and the goose-poop-laden lawn and make it to the crosswalk.  Thankfully, the area in front of me is blissfully empty of humanity.  I can pick my poison at this point: right on the short sidewalk to the street, or left to the long sidewalk under the trees and then to the street.  Naturally, since tick season is starting, I pick the trees because, hey, at this point I am less likely to die from varmint bites than from people breathing, and if I get to the street too quickly, someone is sure to drive by with their windows open, forcing my hand and making me spin around yet again.

Finally, I reach the street again.  This is the part of the route that I like best.  It's a slow grade downhill with sidewalks that crumble into nothing about halfway down, and I get to legally field-bomb on people's property.  Years ago I stretched out both of my Achilles tendons during a mud run, and my tendons to this day hate my guts most of the time, but they are perfectly happy going downhill fast.  I jog at a reasonable clip the quarter or third of a mile from top to telephone pole at the bottom.  I realize that for the first time I am not actually praying to see the telephone pole, and, after dodging another jogger (going uphill, the masochist) and a car plus loose macadam and tree limbs, I am sweaty but not as winded as I usually am.  In other words, I am not sucking air so hard that residents ask me (from a safe and legal distance) if I need an ambulance.

Walking back toward my end of town, I see a person on my side of the street, so I head across the street.  But wait.  Someone is doing lawn work.  Hmmmm. What to do?  Apparently, walk right down the middle of the damn street is the only available option, so that's exactly what I do.  And since I seem to be cheating death and the virus, I decide to go the long way home and walk straight through downtown.  Yup, why not, right? 

But first, I must cross the street by the churches because someone is coming my way and the po po are parked about fifteen feet away from me, watching, waiting, ticket pad in hand.  Of course, I must jay-walk to accomplish this massive maneuver, then jay-walk right back again to regain my turf.  Honestly, I have my ears on high alert waiting for the officer to chase me down and hand me a jaywalking ticket, but then he would be within six feet of me, and, as I stated at the very beginning of this diatribe:  I. Do. Not. Have. A. Mask. With. Me.

Surprisingly, the side of Main Street that I choose has no one on it.  I don't know where everyone is because Starbucks and Dunkins and Cafe Nero and Perfectos are open, and no one is at church because all of the churches are locked up like the state penitentiary.  No, that's not true because the prisons were let loose. 

Ironic. 

I do, however, have to get back to my side of the road because, well, damnit, that's where I live.  I see my opening, take a chance, cross the street (in a crosswalk this time), turn right, and... a person with a mask walks out of the coffee shop and right at me.  There's no place for me to go because the coffee shop line is all the way out the door, on the sidewalk, and into the street.

I can see my house.  I'll be damned if I am going to zig-zag now.  Screw these people who are okay to stand in line for caffeine but won't let me by.  I am the one without a mask.  I am the enemy.  So, I plow on by, making a five-foot turn rather than a six-foot one. 

Hah!  Take THAT, Convid sheeple!

But then, as I near my driveway, a family of mask-wearers approaches me.  Clearly, the have no intention of giving up the sidewalk for one walker.  They expect me to take one more risk of death by walking the double-yellow line of fear.  Instead, I catapult the stonewall, point to my porch, and yell, "It's okay!  I'm just going here!  Fear not, strangers!  You are safe to go get your coffee with the others, who are all breathing the same air and touching the same door and drinking coffee poured out of the same carafe!  Go and be with the Coffee Bean Coalition!"

I sit on my front porch, relaxing and trying to cool down, and I look at my phone app, which has been mapping my walk.  My time and pace and distance (over two miles, hooray) are fine.  However, when I bring up the track of my route, it looks like a psychopath walked it: Left, right, backward, forward, zig-zags, circles, triangulations...  

A walk.  That's all I wanted.  A simple, quiet, direct, uneventful, stress-free, non-$300 walk.  Damn.  Apparently even those don't exist anymore.  I hate this "new normal" shit.

ROOTING FOR NICE WEATHER

A huge line of thunderstorms moved through last evening.  The news people (I know, I know -- Why do I keep listening to them if I suspect they are largely a collective group of morons?) mentioned all day, all afternoon, and all through the dinner hour that we were in the possible tornado zone.  Judging from the line of storms, which at its peak stretched five hundred miles in length, I decided to take the warnings seriously and battened the hatches, pretty much relegating myself to the only windowless, inside rooms: the bathroom and the small hallway outside of the bathroom. 

It wasn't a bad hour or so.  I had my headset on, listened to everything from Louis Armstrong to Zappa, rearranged the linen closet (sort of), cleaned the bathroom (needed it), played an online game of whist against the infamous cheater Techno-Bill, and sucked down an ice-cold beer.  I also kept an eye on the radar which, for my area, dwindled to bad lightning and thunder but no tornado activity.  I've been through a couple of mild tornadoes and two nasty micro-bursts.  I am not complaining, nor am I ready to move to Tornado Alley.

There were some impressive winds, though.  When I went outside this morning, someone had nicely returned my porch chair to its place, albeit folded up but no worse for wear.  Sometimes after storms like this, the damage can be localized and impressive.  But, when I went for a walk with my sister (who had kindly delivered a printer and some gardening supplies)), I was pleased to see that the tender spring blossoms had not been dislodged from ground, bushes, nor trees.

In fact, everything looked as if the storms never even happened.  No downed branches, no garbage cans or lawn chairs or patio furniture scattered around, no toppled signage.  The whole world looked just like true and perfect Spring -- except, of course, for our anti Covid masks.

Thank you, Mother Nature, for at least leaving us some semblance of normalcy and beauty in this otherwise perversely twisted reality.  Honestly, though, if I hear "This is the new normal" one more time, I just might climb into one of these lovely trees and never come down.  Until another storm, anyway.  Not, that's not symbolism; I'm serious.  I don't care for storms, and right now my bathroom is spotless and the linen closet is fairly organized, so let's just root for nice weather for a little while.

MASKING MOTHERS' DAY

It's Mothers' Day.  Kind of a suck being stuck in our homes.

We can, however, go out if we are wearing masks and properly socially distancing ourselves from others.  So I have taken it upon myself to sew masks for family members.  Each of my children has received several masks from me, made with clean but excess fabric from my sewing days, and lined with layers of interfacing.  I figure if we are going to go out, we should have some fashion options.

For example, my daughter and her boyfriend got a couple of my early mask models, mostly failures, but they good-heartedly took the masks, anyway.  My youngest got masks made out of his clean leftover shirts and sports towels, so he has a Bud Light mask, among others.  My eldest received some masks, one made from a college lacrosse shirt, plus masks for his family, including for his kiddos.

My daughter is a nurse, so she is also getting headbands with buttons to protect her ears (plus a whole bunch for people with whom she works).  I used up all of the decent buttons in the old family button box (some of those buttons were pure vintage), plus online companies and I have had an interesting button and headband business going.

It's good, though.  I mean, yes, I am still working longer and harder than I have ever worked (or at least since raising kids and going to grad school while working full time), but I have been able to rediscover a semblance of my Mom Duties, which have been a large part of my adult life.

So, here's to being stuck in my home.  But, here's also to Mothers' Day.  May we all find a little meaning in our lives during this awkward, unprecedented, and fractured family time.

ENJOYING THE SCENERY VICARIOUSLY

In the midst of fourteen-hour work days and long working weekends, I have discovered something terrible about my schedule: Now that my classroom is at home, I cannot escape it.  I cannot say, "Oh, I will leave that data spreadsheet for tomorrow during my prep period" because first of all, the data notebook is here at my house waiting for me 24/7, and second, prep periods no longer exist.  There is no set curriculum anymore because materials are at school, and we are back to recreating lessons from memory or, in many cases, from scratch.

I keep my remote teaching schedule taped to the window frame above my school-issued laptop so I can periodically look at it and say, "Oh, crap. I have to stop fielding commentary from my C block class because I was supposed to be in D block eight minutes ago."  I have the state power standards for which I am professionally responsible also taped to the window frame, and I spend my entire day (and often into the wee hours of the morning) jumping from my school laptop to my desktop because the school laptop is not connected to my printer since, of course, I must document everything I do remotely by creating a paper trail, which is coldly ironic in this day and age of "paperless" school.

Mostly, though, I am having trouble with lunch.  Yes, that's right: LUNCH.

For the first time in over two decades, my working lunch isn't a mere twenty-two minutes (minus the hall duty and passing time, so more like seventeen minutes); my working lunch if actually a scheduled forty minutes.  It's amazing.  So, once a week I have been trying to take an errand lunch: I run one or two errands and then I go for a quick drive around town with the windows open, regardless of the weather or the temperature.

One day I went to the liquor store and the grocery store to pick up a small amount of items and still made it back with fifteen minutes to spare before my afternoon webinar started.  Another day I went to the post office to mail a package of homemade masks, and then I went exploring a nearby pond for about ten minutes. Sometimes I go for a walk and occasionally skip eating for the benefit of some fresh air.  I mean, I can actually eat at my desk now because no one in my home classroom is allergic to peanut butter.  It's pretty amazing.

If we are Facebook or Instagram pals, you may see posts chronicling my lunchtime excursions.  I try to incorporate water into my theme drives, too, because I am already missing kayaking and walking on the beach, even though those activities wouldn't have started in earnest just yet.  I feel like a caged animal, unable to fully enjoy my surroundings when I'm inside nor when I'm in the semi-outdoors.  It's "semi" because the government is telling us where we can and cannot go (even though we all own the public open spaces).

So, my friends, if you suddenly see posts about being outside, you will know that yes, I am working on my mental health; yes, I probably had something important that needed to be done -- like a sangria run -- and just took the scenic way.  But most of all, you will know that I am playing just a wee bit of hooky from school because I now have an extra eighteen minutes to my lunch, which is really like getting two entire lunch periods for the price of one..

Fear not; I'll make up any of the "running late" minutes that I may miss.  After all, school is in session  each weekday for five hours and I work double that daily, including weekends.    Just watch out for me in case I come home sopping wet one day: It means I cannot take this anymore, and I threw myself into the pond.  That won't happen, though, with the state police throwing us all out of the pond parking lot. So, for now, just vicariously enjoy the scenery, as do I.