This fine post-Christmas Monday morning finds me at the kitchen table, eating a chocolate bar a friend left on my porch one night, drinking a cup of coffee made from beans passed to me through an open car window (that was how gifts were exchanged this year—quickly, from a distance, but with even more effort and care than usual). Barclay got me the latest Jimmy Eat World CD and I'm on listen number 25, at least (it's, predictably, incredible). The kids are playing outside and Barclay's in the basement covering the hole the plumbers left behind when they updated our sewer lines (so festive). I should be cleaning the kitchen but I'm on here instead, writing an aimless blog post like back in the good ol' days.
I'm going to spare you the post about how different Christmas was this year—except to say that, for better or for worse, it was the most relaxing December I've had in a long time. There was no loading up the car for multiple family gatherings, no last minute Christmas present shopping, no in-person parties. Barclay and I traded off work hours most days and spent the evenings doing puzzles and wrapping presents as they showed up in the mailbox. Watching old episodes of Newhart on Youtube. Playing Settlers. We spent one whole day making an elaborate 'gingerbread' house out of Rice Krispies and sugar cookie dough and we ate the whole thing too because it wasn't made out of stale, store-bought gingerbread, which I loathe with every taste receptor cell in my tongue (there are anywhere from 50 to 150, according to Google). We took the kids tobogganing almost every other night and had the hills to ourselves almost always because no one in this city understands the gloriousness of night tobogganing. At times, I felt like one of those families who moves out into the wilderness and cuts all ties with civilization in pursuit of slow living (except we still took advantage of things like electricity and our grocery store's Click 'n Collect service).
It was mostly very nice, is what I'm saying, the quietness and to-ourselves-ness of this Christmas season—though I definitely look forward to the busyness and togetherness of next Christmas.
Sorry, I failed so hard at sparing you the post about how different Christmas was this year. I was going to write a post about the upcoming year—resolutions, goals, whatever whatever—but this is what came out today. I'll try again tomorrow, maybe.
Until then, Merry Belated Christmas from the Wilderness Krauses!
So. We have arrived at the end of 2020. The kind of year that, at first glance, seems like it would make a great movie. (At second glance, you realize it is many movies of incongruent genres all jammed into one and all of them need extensive editing to be even remotely palatable.)
I'm going to do that 'ABCs of' thing now. It feels a BIT self-indulgent, in light of the massive things that have gone on this year that have nothing to do with my little life, so I feel like I have to put a disclaimer about how I know it's self-indulgent, and how I know that the things I'm going to share here are mostly only important to me and my family, and that I'm not sharing them for any other reason than to have written them down for myself to look back on in the future, as with everything I write on this blog. I also would encourage you to write down your own ABCs of 2020, because it's very fun.
And, yeah, self-indulgent.
A - A favorite song (and its accompanying music video) from this year: All Together Now by OK GO. It reminds me of the beginning of the pandemic, when [it felt as though] everyone was on the same team. It was a terrifying time in a lot of ways, but it was so comforting back then to know that we were all going through the exact same thing, that our goals were the same, that we all trusted the leaders and we all trusted each other (aside from, you know, the whole toilet paper thing) and everyone was willing to make extreme sacrifices for the greater good. It felt possible that we might emerge from this thing a better society, if not entirely unscathed.
I think back on that time with a weird sense of nostalgia, now that everything has devolved into chaos and dissension and distrust and, in general, a disgusting amount of selfishness.
Wow. Just starting off on a REAL HIGH NOTE.
All that mattered then, all that matters now All that matters after the world shuts down All of it dissolved all together in the chrysalis
B - Baking. We did a lot of baking this year. Donuts, muffins, cookies, scones, cinnamon buns...etc. It was a very 'on trend' thing to become a fancy baker this year. (I did not, however, climb aboard the sourdough bus.)
C - Can't honestly think of any notable things from 2020 that start with the letter C, so I'm going to have to leave this one.
D - Drive-thrus and Drive-ins and Driving—it was a year of car outings. Taking the kids for drive-thru Happy Meals, attending a drive-thru art exhibit, a drive-in concert, a drive-in Christmas lights show. Waving at friends as we drove past their houses, sometimes just...driving around to kill time with a go-mug and some coloring books. Parking by the lake to sit in the back of the Rav and eat donuts.
E - Eleventh wedding anniversary! We celebrated by walking downtown, grabbing coffee and cinnamon buns and scones—to go—and eating them in Central Park (Regina's Central Park, not New York's).
F - Foreign rights. I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to say this out loud yet, but very few people read my blog these days so I'm just going to say it: I had my first foreign rights sales this year. This is one of my longest-running writer goals and I'm ecstatic about it. More details (and some cool new book covers) to come.
G - Grade One. Sully started the first grade! He's so happy to be back in school (with a lot more home days than usual and a lot of restrictions and regulations, but still. It's a limp toward normalcy.)
H - High hopes: Like many other people (and like many other years) I went into 2020 with the highest of hopes and expectations and plans and goals. I had three pages in my day planner dedicated to the launch party for SIMY. I had a fantastic publicist who was working her butt off writing emails and making calls to book stores to arrange a little Canadian book tour. I wrote that blog post about being brave and saying yes to terrifying things, and I had already begun to follow through. I was going to speak at a writer's conference and teach a workshop at the library. It all got cancelled, obviously. That's life though, isn't it? We plan and our plans come to ruin and we act surprised every time; it's very cute of us. I'm trying to decide if this means I should go into 2021 with low expectations, or if I should hope just as high but hold it all with a more open hand?
I - I got a Covid test (negative). Scarlett got one too (also negative). Uncomfortable!
J - Japan: I hadn't thought about this one in a while, but near the beginning of the year I was offered a job as a writer on the official Olympics podcast in Tokyo, which would've meant spending some time in Tokyo this past summer and which obviously and for various reasons didn't happen but was fun to daydream about. Anyway, I figure that in some alternate universe, a few variations from this one, I did that this year. So I thought it should be on the list.
K - Knewsletter. I started a newsletter. I sent exactly ONE out. If you're not on the mailing list, you can sign up here. Maybe someday, I will send ANOTHER ONE.
L - Live Music. Sigh. Obviously, had I known what was to come, I'd have gone to five million shows in January and February. As it was, I went to...one. I saw my friend Marissa Burwell perform at a comedy show in the Artestian. It was lovely, and wonderful, and I'd had savored it even harder if I'd known it would be my one live music experience of 2020. OH WAIT. Come to think of it, there was also that drive-in concert in August (Megan Nash). I also saw a man playing a clarinet under the Broad Street Bridge and a different man playing a saxophone under there another day and I heard someone playing their fiddle in their back yard from my bedroom window one afternoon and I'm counting all of those too.
O - Obsessed with the workout app I found this fall (FitOn). Since I no longer have a social life, I now work out four evenings a week and it's a weird thing for me, specifically, to be excited about but I'm excited about it.
P - Preschool! Scarlett started preschool this year and is loving her life there. She has a tiny class and she loves her teacher.
Q - Quiet—if I had to pick a word for this year. But also: Loud, because I was home with two little kids for a lot of it. Which: I do know that this was a lot sometimes, and really hard a lot of the time. The kids missed their friends, I missed mine, we missed leaving the house when it felt too small and having things to look forward to. But it was also really fun and special to have such "protected" (we're going to call it that and not something negative, like "forced") time as a family and we figured out how to make the very best of it, which was, in and of itself, very rewarding. In hindsight it's already taking on a very rosy tint: picnics in the front yard, figuring out how to make homemade ice cream, building forts, playing hide and seek as a family (Barclay and I got very creative and competitive there), lots of walks in the summer and tobogganing in the winter...
R - Read 22 books! Many of them were written by friends, and I loved all of them so much. The friends and the books.
S - Sorry I Missed You came out in June.
T - Took each of the kids out for First Week of School Donut Dates.
U - Underrated Thing of the Year: Clean and Clear Watermelon Gel Moisturizer. This stuff smells like candy and I feel like a pre-teen for loving it so much.
V - Vacation: LOL. Went literally nowhere.
W - Worked on my third book. Got frustrated and shelved it. Worked on a different book. Realized that I was still basically working on the shelved book, just with a different title. Merged the two books. Did not finish; that'll have to be okay. Maybe in 2021.
X - XXXIII (I turned 33!)
Y - Yard. We built a big fence around our back yard and the kids have spent about 45% of the year out there. One day, I looked out and they had, with their tiny little hands and a crowbar they found in the garage, pried up every single brick from the walking path to the garage and used those bricks to build a little "house." It was incredibly impressive.
Z - Zoom. This is the first year it hasn't been hard to think of a word for the letter Z. I don't really even need to explain this one, I guess, but for future me: this was where Sullivan attended school for a few months, where we had Easter celebrations with the grandparents, where we had surprise birthday parties and Christmas parties and hangouts and where the kids played LEGO with their friends. Zoom book clubs, Zoom interviews, Zoom meetings, Zoom Mom's groups, Zoom author events, even a Zoom viewing party for That Thing You Do. Sometimes Zoom made me feel closer to people and emphasized how important those relationships were that we would suffer online communication over nothing at all, sometimes it made them feel really far away and emphasized how abnormal things were; it depended on my mood, on the internet connection. I love Zoom. I hate it. It's whatever.
And that's it! I wasn't even going to do one of these this year—we didn't go anywhere; we didn't do much, I thought. But I'm glad to have done it—like usual. A year in review is always much more satisfying and meaningful than one in progress.
Here's to 2021: WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN but may we all face it with courage, kindness, and...like, a lot of flexibility.
It's almost November, wow. That means 2020 is almost over and people can stop making jokes about what a bad year it is. ...or they can start making jokes about how bad 2021 is. Personally, I'm hoping we all just wake up on January first and the sky is blue and there's a message in the clouds that reads "HAPPY NEW YEAR! ALL THE BAD STUFF IS OVER YOU CAN JUST SPEND THIS YEAR CHILLING OUT!"
But. Yeah.
Anyway.
I'm coming to you live from isolation; one of us was exposed to Covid last week (at school; it was bound to happen sooner or later I guess) so now we're supposed to just hang out here until we get sick or until we don't get sick, and I figured, why not write a little update post? For allllll of the millions of people who wish I would.
Let's...see...
Well. I've started doing these YouTube workout videos in the evenings, now that it gets dark before supper and I can't do my usual walk around the neighborhood after the kids are sleeping. It's been really nice; I feel stronger. I've started taking vitamin D, too, which makes me feel like I should feel noticeably happier, so I'm not sure if I'm happier because I feel like I should feel happier or if I feel happier because of the vitamin D, but I do feel happier, and that's nice too. I've also started painting my fingernails again, which means that I'm not picking at them, which is good for Barclay's mental health.
So I'm stronger and happier, and Barclay is not grinding his teeth listening to me pick my nails all day long, so he's happier too. Although...he's also taking Vitamin D, so his happiness may be unrelated to my fingernails, or it may be a placebo effect as well. Who knows? Happiness is strange. I'll take it however it comes.
What else...I'm working, as always, on a novel. People are always asking me about that, they ask me, "Suzy, tell me about your next novel."
To which I reply, "Well, it's a long story..."
Ha Ha Ha.
I haven't actually been quick enough to think to say that in real life. But I will next time. I hope.
Anyway. It is kind of a long story. I'm not under contract with the publisher of my last two books at the moment, but my previous contract had an option clause in it so that the next time I write a book I have to show it to them before I try shopping it around anywhere else—which is great, since I loved working with them.
So I wrote this novel last year, a whole fat 75,000-word book, with the intention of sending it to Lake Union. I finished writing it in March or April—in the midst of that first lockdown, and sent it to my agent, who wrote up an editorial letter and sent it back. My second book came out around then and the editorial letter was a tad overwhelming, so I sat on it for a while, took a little brain vacation...and then I started writing a new book. That old one had some Big Things missing, and I didn't know what they were, so I figured I'd give it a rest and come back to it when I had the brain capacity to figure out what the work was that needed to be done there.
I had an idea for a new book that I was really excited about, so I started writing it, and a few chapters in I realized that this new book, essentially, consisted of all the Big Things that were missing from the previous book. As though my subconscious was still working on that book even though I'd "moved on."
So where I'm at right now is: I'm welding these two books together. And I'm really excited about it. And it feels great to feel excited, because there were a few months there where I was thinking I should go back to school to become a professional Anything Other Than This.
But then, who knows? Maybe this excitement has nothing to do with the book.
I glanced at the calendar this week and realized it's been three years since Scarlett came to live with us. As with everything, it feels impossible that it's been three years already and that there was a time she wasn't here. People often ask me if we celebrate the day she moved in—some call it "Gotcha Day" (which, honestly, makes me shudder)—and if we have a party, like a birthday party. I usually fumble with an answer, and think afterward about what I wish I would've said. So, here. This is what I usually wish I would've said:
I haven't written much about how Scarlett came to be part of our family on social media—and won't, because, like I said before, it's not my story to tell. Most of the parts of it that are mine are so tangled up in hers that I can't tell them either. I think this is one of those things that is very hard for anyone who became a parent in a unique way. It's a story that lots of people seem to want to hear—from the grocery store clerk who noticed that you have an extra person in your company all of a sudden, to the nosy lady in the park who observed that one of your kids "doesn't look very much like any of you!" And it feels like it's your story because people are asking you, because it impacted you a lot, because it changed your life.
But it's...just not your story.
The only part of the story that really feels like mine is that early on in 2017, Barclay and I had some pretty interesting conversations about feeling like we were waiting for someone, but we didn't know who it was. We briefly discussed foster care, but—I know this is going to sound a bit crazy—that didn't feel like "it." So we just waited. We met Scarlett when she was four months old, a few months after we'd begun having these conversations. She was living with my aunt at the time, and she came to live with us three months later.
Since then, we've come to know and love her—and we've come to know and love her parents. To answer another common question, yep, we do call them her parents...for that is what they are! Scarlett calls me Mom, and she calls her other mom Mom too. And when I'm talking to Scarlett, I call her mom Mom and her mom calls me Mom when she's talking to Scarlett about me. This stuff is only as confusing as the adults let it be—she has two grandmas and two grandpas, and that doesn't weird her out, why shouldn't she have two moms and two dads?
So she's got this big, weird family that operates a bit differently than most others, and we're all okay with it...which is why it would feel strange to me to celebrate the day that she moved in to the bedroom across the hall, as opposed to simply celebrating her birthday, the day she came into this world to all of the people who love her. I don't think there needs to be a division, as though there was a time when she was "theirs" and a time when she became "ours." What's important to me is that she knows she's loved by all of us, and that her parents feel honored and loved too.
Other people might see all of this differently. I might see it differently later on, who knows? But for now, this is how it is. For now, every August, I quietly observe that day as it passes, and remember seven-month-old Scarlett laughing in the back seat of my car at Sully as they got to know each other. I remember the many sleepless nights that followed that reminded me vividly of the sleepless nights after Sully was born. I remember her first steps and first words and first Christmas and birthday. I remember trying to figure out what she liked to eat and how she liked to play and how to bring out that hilarious belly-laugh she's so famous for. I think when she's a bit older I'll bring her into this quiet reverie, and this week in August might just be a chance to talk to her about herself, to tell her the stories I'm not going to tell you.
There's a teenage newspaper delivery girl who comes to my street corner every Thursday afternoon with her papers in a blue foldable wagon. She grabs a stack and, leaving the wagon on the sidewalk in front of my house, runs up the street, returning every fifteen minutes or so for more papers. The other day, she brought a friend along, a guy who left his bike on the corner with her wagon.
The weird thing was that he didn't leave the bike on the sidewalk, or even beside the sidewalk—he left it way out in the middle of the street with its little kickstand out, forcing cars to drive around it. Maybe he thought he was being funny? I remember being fifteen; I remember doing stupid things, thinking I was being funny.
But now I am 33. Now I stand at my window, clutching a mug of cold coffee and scowling at fifteen-year-olds who can't see me hiding behind my blinds. I do not think they're funny. I do not think anything's funny. Hey you kids, get off my lawn! Or, off the street, rather! Get off the street and THEN get off my lawn!
I took a picture of the obnoxious white bike sitting out in the middle of the street and texted it to my neighbor. Who, I wrote with an air of disdain fit for a queen, leaves their bike in the middle of the street like this? I began to daydream about someone stealing the bike, or driving over the bike, just to teach the kid a lesson. Am I a bad person? Does this make me a bad person? I've hit the stage of adulthood where I talk nonstop about politics and wish harsh life lessons on the young people.
I looked out the window again, in time to see a man ride up on a pink bike. He noticed the white bike in the middle of the street, but he was more pleased about it than I was. He was downright thrilled, actually. He dismounted his own bike and grabbed the handlebars of the white bike. Two bikes, for the price of none! What a lucky afternoon! He nudged the kickstand with his foot and started to wheel it away.
Theft! I realized then that I didn't actually want anyone to steal the bike. I felt bad for the kid. He was just trying to be funny. He didn't deserve to lose his bike over it.
Fortunately for me and my conscience, and unfortunately for the would-be bike thief, my mom was there.
She and my dad had just pulled up. They were visiting from out of town, and she's no fool. She knows a bike robbery when she sees one.
"I don't think that's your bike," she said to him, smiling, because my mom is always smiling, at everyone.
He stared at her. "I need this bike," he said simply, as though she were misunderstanding the situation. "Mine has a flat."
"Well yes," she said, "but it's not your bike."
I was out there too by this time. The guy looked defeated when he saw me, like he thought it was my bike and now that I was there he couldn't have it.
"Is this your bike?" my mom asked me.
I said it wasn't, but that I knew whose bike it was. The guy perked up. "Whose is it then?" He lifted his chin defiantly at me, as though he suspected I was making up the fact that it had an owner. Like bikes don't usually have owners and it was inconceivable that this one did, like maybe I just didn't want him to have a bike and was messing with him to be mean.
I smiled at him. Like my mom. My dad was smiling too. Everyone was smiling except the man who just wanted to steal a bike in PEACE, people. "Some guy out delivering newspapers. He'll be back soon."
"How do you know he'll be back soon?" the guy challenged me. "What if he doesn't come back?"
My parents and I gawked at him for a moment. "He'll come back," I said finally. "He was literally just here. Shouldn't have left his bike in the middle of the street though. That wasn't a great idea." I was trying to lighten the mood. Didn't work.
The man was getting annoyed with us. He had a bag draped over the handlebars of the pink bike, and he started to rummage through it, discarding the things he didn't want right onto the street. Something made of green tulle and ribbons that looked like it had been part of a wedding favor. A pair of underwear.
My dad gestured at the guy's bike. "Where'd you get that one?" he asked. My mom and I looked at my dad like, Don't ask don't ask don't ask.
The guy shrugged. "Found it." And he glared at us, like, How else does one get a bike, exactly?
We all nodded a lot, like, Okay, of course, that's how we get bikes too that's how everyone gets bikes.
We went back and forth a few more times. The guy tried to explain to us a few other ways why he should be allowed to steal the bike. We countered with some pretty persuasive arguments about how stealing is just, like, against the law and stuff. He mentioned his flat tire again. We tried not to mention that it wasn't really his flat tire to begin with.
"Well," said the guy at last, resigned, "I'll come back to this address later and get this bike."
"Okay," we said, like, Okay, that's a good idea.
And then the guy left.
And then the white bike's owner came back and I got to say to him the thing I'd been dyyyyyying to say to him for the past thirty minutes.
"Hey, how's it going?" I said. I pointed at the bike, which my mom was still holding onto, "Some guy just tried to steal your bike. Probably shouldn't leave it in the middle of the street like that."
Learned his lesson, he did.
And I went back to my spot in the window to guard the neighborhood and judge the kids for trying to be funny, as is my duty.
Actually, we say that in July too, and in June, and May. Every month we say that and again at every month's halfway point. Adult human beings exist in this constant state of wonderment that it is the day that it is—already!—while also constantly wishing it was a different day. And the different day we wish it was is never the day we thought it was going to be, or if it is we're surprised and upset when it ends, as though we thought that day might come and time might freeze and we might get to live in that day for a few years, at least, or forever if we're lucky.
I guess this year is different in that a lot of the things we were going to do—from work to music festivals to vacations—have been canceled or shuffled or adjusted or modified beyond recognition. Time marches on like our moms at Walmart, right past the toy aisles, straight to the school supplies. So maybe this year it does feel like May and June and July were truly lost, not just fast.
In other ways, for some of us, it's just felt like summer.
Barclay and I never do summer vacations—because we're broke and he's mostly always done seasonal work and summer is busy and I'm in the creative lull that comes after releasing a book, which means that I've had neither the desire nor the ability to work on the next thing. So summer this year just kind of looks like it was going to look, Covid19 or no Covid19. The kids and I, at home, at the park, on walks around the neighborhood. Drawing, playing, cleaning, baking. Sometimes meeting up with friends for outdoor playdates.
But while I may not have physically travelled anywhere these past few months, I have covered a lot of distance emotionally. Through March's feelings of disorientation and fear (what is this thing? What's happening?), through April's grief (we miss people; we miss normal things—and still, what's happening?) and the increasing dissonance of May, June, and July as the illusion of togetherness completely shattered and everyone began to vehemently disagree about whether the virus was real, whether it was "that bad," whether it was all a conspiracy, whether we should obey the government's guidelines or not...
Honestly, that's been the worst part of all of it for me. It's been—at the risk of sounding just a tad hysterical—psychological torture to hear first-hand accounts of the abject horror of this sickness from friends who live in hot spots or work in Covid units or have had loved ones die or have fallen sick themselves, even as folks are out there shouting as loud as they can, "People aren't dying! It's all a hoax, an overreaction! It's just the flu!" My brain hurts.
I have been thinking of similes to illustrate this strange time in history, simply because I love similes. Here are three:
1. It's like someone's humming a note and ten other people are holding ten other notes just slightly off-key to create this discordant, confusing DRONE. After a while, the noise becomes part of the background but you feel unsettled all the time and a little like you're losing your mind.
2. It's like I am standing beside a person watching an avalanche come roaring down a mountain, and I am like, "AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!" And the person beside me is like, "What's your problem?"
3. It's like a bunch of people decided to start driving through school zones at 100 km/h and are incredulous that I'm still going 30. I often feel like a completely crazy person, but why? It's not like I'm going to drive 20 or 10. It's not like I'm going to set my car on fire and never drive again; I'm literally just obeying the law. I just trust the professionals who've done the studies and decided that this is the safest speed for driving in a place where vulnerable people might possibly be walking... And if those professionals are, for whatever reason, actually evil villains who just want to take away my rights to drive really fast...okay? At least my conscience is clean and I'll know I made choices I can live with in the event that they're not evil villains?
Anyway.
We've arrived at August. Already. And now school is looming on the horizon, which is a bit weird, and if time keeps on going the way it has always gone, September will be here before we know it. There are a lot of opinions and sides and anger and fear swirling around the subject of school—but I suppose I should be used to opinions and sides and anger and fear by now. Those are basically the mascots of 2020. There was an announcement last week about what the school year is going to look like, about what the plan is. The plan, it turns out, is very...skeletal. No masks, no reduced classroom sizes, etc—it's very much about normalcy and not making the kids feel like they're going to school in a pandemic. The problem is: the kids are going to school in a pandemic.
So I suppose that's a thing I will need to figure out soon here. What this fall will look like for Sully and Scarlett and me.
But for now? It's August. Already! But also, only. Today,I'm going to take my kids to the park. I'm going to enjoy it. If there's anything I've learned from living through a pandemic, it's that thinking about the pandemic all the time doesn't actually do anything at all.
Maybe you're like, whoa, Suzy, none of us thought we weren't going to make it to July; did you think we weren't going to make it to July?
Well I don't know. Kind of? It's been one of those years, and you can't tell me it hasn't been. I had a dream the other night where I looked up into the sky and saw a glowing ball of fire headed straight for earth and I knew we were going to die, and in the dream I just sighed as though I were a little disappointed and calmly said to Barclay, "I'm not even surprised, with the way this year has been." Like 2020 was my disappointing teenaged child who had, yet again, failed me in some major but not unusual way.
And then we just stood there with our arms around each other and stared into the huge night sky as the ball of fire grew bigger and bigger...
So my subconscious is, like, over it, right? My subconscious is like, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AND I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO BE SURPRISED JUST TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, 2020.
But look at us! July!
Okay!
So now that I've jinxed us good, on to the blog post:
I'd like to revisit a post I wrote in February—this one: 2020 A New Year's Resolution. In that post I wrote about my resolution for this year, which was, in a nutshell, to be brave, and to stop telling myself and others that I was not brave, especially in regards to things like interviews and podcasts and stuff like that. Public speaking.
This was a pretty lofty goal for me—after all, I wasn't just nervous about doing interviews. I was pretty much panic-stricken. I'd get physically ill about a week before an interview. It was all I'd think about. I'd shake through the whole thing. I hated, hated, hated doing them. And then after I did them, I'd feel sick about having done them, and I'd feel almost more nervous in retrospect than I had before or during the actual interview—nervous to the point where I wouldn't tell anyone that I'd even done an interview (like, not even Barclay, you guys) because I couldn't stand the thought of a single other person on the planet listening to these things.
And you might be thinking, okay, so just don't do interviews. Just say no to people—and this is also something I've been working on, the just saying no when I don't feel up to something. (That's been going well, actually! I've been very picky about what I've said yes to this summer, and I think that's been healthy and good and nice.)
But I also think—have always thought—it's healthy to do things that are hard for you. AND, I think it's important to figure out why the things that are hard for you...are hard for you. Especially when it comes to fear. Like, why am I deathly afraid of talking in front of people? Talking in front of people isn't dangerous, so why are my actual survival instincts kicking in over it?
Besides. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this wasn't just something that affected me when I was doing interviews or book club talks—which makes sense, because fear is rarely localized. It rarely pops up for no reason in one area of your life and then just stays where it is, affecting nothing and being affected by nothing. I've noticed this fear popping up in all kinds of weird places. Self-consciousness in conversations with friends. Having a hard time meeting new people. Second guessing EVERYTHING. Etcetera, etcetera. Blah blah blah. I felt like this weird fear had some serious vine-like potential to just grow all over my life and wrap itself around everything. So my motivation for getting rid of it isn't some vain I WANT TO BE A PODCAST SUPERSTAR AND TALK A BUNCH IN PUBLIC thing, it's more that I want to be a person who is comfortable in my skin and with my voice coming out of my face and with the thoughts in my head. I guess I just noticed that this is a fear with a trajectory, and I would like to point that thing in the right direction. You know?
So.
I don't know where this specific fear came from—like I said in that other blog post, I haven't always been this afraid of being seen and heard—and I'm not sure exactly what to do to get its roots out of me, but I'm a big believer in small changes. So at the beginning of this year, I started with the very smallest thing: I stopped saying (out loud to other people AND in the quiet of my own brain) that I was afraid of public speaking. I mean, sometimes I slipped, but most of the time I caught myself. And—wonder of wonders—it's...working? I think? Slowly but surely.
(I should add that this isn't me telling all anxious people that if you stop saying you're anxious you'll stop being anxious; that would be silly and impossible. This is just me saying: Hey. Don't tell yourself you're bad at stuff because YOU WILL BELIEVE YOURSELF.)
Anyway. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
(Wait, why do they say that? I'll check. OH. Okay. Here's a thing I've [very] recently learned: The original version is "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." So. Interesting.)
So the proof of the pudding is in the eating: I did a podcast interview last Thursday and we talked about this a little bit, about this resolution and how it seems to be working, which is kind of a full-circle moment, to talk about not being afraid to do podcasts on a podcast. And I, who was not only not feeling ill, but even quite enjoying myself, had one of those rare moments where you can actually see and measure personal progress in a very tangible way. It! Felt! Great!
But also, the interview itself was very fun. We talked about Jimmy Eat World and Rush and Taylor Swift and Stars and Garth Brooks and Olafur Arnalds and Rachmaninoff. We talked about publishing and blogging and lasagne and Scotland. We also talked about reviews and I jinxed myself there too by saying people were leaving nice reviews for Sorry I Missed You. (I woke up this morning to many bad reviews, including one saying I was conceited for classifying my book as "book club fiction" and including book club questions in the back because what book club in their right mind is going to waste their time with the drivel I've written?—which is funny because Lake Union is a book club fiction imprint and I am not responsible for that classification AT ALL. Oh well. People be people.)
I will leave it here, for anyone to listen to who wants to, because I'm not afraid of you. (Please do picture adorable little Kevin McCallister marching out of his big white house yelling, "Hey! I'm not afraid anymore!")
In March, I had a vivid dream. It's clearer in my mind than most actual things that happened that month.
The dream started with me awake. I mean, in the dream, I was awake. I was sitting up in bed, and it was morning. I was stretching and yawning and hearing noises from the kitchen—running water, the coffee grinder. I got up.
In the kitchen, Barclay was standing over the stove, cracking eggs into the frying pan. Sully was sitting at the table, concentrating hard on a picture he was coloring. Scarlett was in the cupboard over the sink, folded right in half with her hands clutching her little feet.
I said good morning to everyone and everyone said good morning to me. I walked into the living room.
The couch wasn't green. I stared at it. The couch was always green. How was the couch suddenly not green? It was blue now, which isn't a huge leap from green, it's not very far on the color wheel, but couches don't just go from green to blue overnight. But then, I thought, maybe they do? And suddenly I couldn't remember how couches worked. It felt like information I should know, information that had once been solidly filed away in my brain—like how I remember learning about cumulonimbus clouds in second grade. I know I have that knowledge, I know I've gotten and grasped it, but when I open the mental filing cabinet to pull out the little info card, it's gone.
Do cumulonimbus clouds produce rain?
Are they flat or fluffy?
Do couches change color overnight? Who knows?
That's when it struck me that Scarlett shouldn't be in the cupboard above the sink. Another piece of important information I'd forgotten somehow. She could fall!
I spun around and ran to get her, but now she was sitting at the table with Sully. I'd been imagining it, probably. I looked at the couch; it was green.
Huh.
Barclay noticed I had a funny look on my face and asked if I was okay. Because Dream Barclay is just as thoughtful and considerate as Real Barclay.
"No," I said. "I'm asleep."
He looked concerned. "No you're not," he said. "We're all awake."
"No," I said, rubbing my forehead with both of my hands. "I'm really, really asleep. Scarlett was in the cupboard and the couch was blue."
"No," he said again. He was getting frustrated. "The couch has always been green." I noticed he didn't comment on Scarlett being in the cupboard.
"Yeah, I know," I said. "That's why I know I'm sleeping. This. Is. A. Dream."
I went back to my room and got into my bed and closed my eyes and tried to wake up. And I couldn't. And I started to feel panicky, like someone had a pillow over my face.
I went back into the kitchen and politely asked Barclay to crack an egg over my head.
He said no. He wanted to know why. I was so angry.
"I just think it'll wake me up," I said. I was verging on hysterics. I was starting to raise my voice. "Just do it. Please. Now. Barclay."
And poor Dream Barclay, who is very full of common sense in all the worlds, even the ones in my head, saw that there was nothing for it but to crack an egg over his frantic wife's head.
I felt the shell break, and I felt the yolk run into my hair and down the back of my neck.
And then I woke up. I continued to feel the yolk dribbling into my ear for a few seconds as I left the dream. Then I went into the kitchen, where Barclay and Sullivan were (Scarlett wasn't awake yet) and checked the couch and the cupboard and I touched things like a crazy person to see if everything was solid and real.
A few days later, Saskatchewan declared a state of emergency. The schools closed. Businesses closed. Everyone was asked to stay home and everything was cancelled, from the writing workshop at the local library to Disneyland. The news was all Covid-19, all the time.
It felt dangerous to go outside, but then you'd go outside and it looked like it always did. You'd go to the grocery store, and it was your same old grocery store with all the same people and all the same stuff, but the baking aisle was empty of flour and there were arrows on the floor. You'd go for a walk and you'd walk past all the usual places but the parks were all wrapped up in Caution tape and the houses had hearts in the windows.
Everything was the same, but there were these important things that were different, that were substantial enough to make you feel like you were losing it. Or asleep. And there were people who didn't think it was that big of a deal, which made you feel even more crazy.
(I don't know why I'm talking in past tense, like any of this is over.)
Anyway. I've been thinking about that dream a lot lately, for some reason.
There was a bunny, first of all, and Scarlett was terrified of it. I was inside and I heard her screaming.
"HE'S GONNA GET ME! NO!! GET AWAY!"
I, of course, sprinted out there, ready to hit an adult man over the head with a shovel but...it was a bunny. Sully assured me that he could take care of it. He took a step in the bunny's direction and the bunny hit the road, as bunnies tend to do. Sully turned to me.
"I have a pretty good mean face," he said.
Scarlett nodded. "I has a pretty good mean face too," she said, because she mostly just says whatever Sully says.
So that was that.
But then there was a wasp.
I'd gone back into the house and picked up my coffee cup, and no sooner had I raised it to my lips than two shrill screams called me back outside. I met them at the door.
"There's a wasp!" Sully yelled at me, his face beet red. "I think! Is it warm enough for wasps now!?"
I shrugged. "Maybe?"
"I think it is, Mom!"
Scarlett looked like she was going to burst into tears. "I SINK IT IS, MOM, TOO!"
So I gave them hugs and told them not to, like, hit a wasp's nest or anything, but that they'd probably be fine and Scarlett watched Sully to see if they were still afraid and it seemed like they weren't so she calmed down and followed him back outside.
I retreated back into my cool, quiet kitchen, back to where my coffee was getting cold on the counter. I picked it up and paused. No screaming. Great. I took a drink.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! IT'S IN MY HAIR!!!!!"
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM!!!!"
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
"NO!!!!!!!"
"GET IT OFF!!!!"
Etc, etc.
They were like two little ambulances screaming into the house, sirens blaring. They were beside themselves. I couldn't even understand them at first.
Sully made it to me first. "MOM THERE'S A WASP IN SCARLETT'S HAIR."
"MOM DERE'S A WASP IN MY HAIR."
Now Scarlett was crying and flapping her hands around her head and Sully was flapping his hands around her head too and someone was screaming again.
And then I saw it. It wasn't a wasp at all.
I'm sure it felt like a wasp when it landed on her head. And I'm sure Sully saw it land in his peripheral vision, and I'm sure it looked like a wasp because that's what he was expecting. And I think it's cute that he was so upset on her behalf that she had a wasp in her hair.
But it wasn't a wasp.
"It's not a wasp," I said, and the screaming stopped almost instantaneously.
Sully peered over at Scarlett. "Oh," he said. "But I saw it fly in there." But then he saw what it was. He squinted at it.
"Nope," I said. "Not a wasp."
Scarlett, relieved to know that whatever was in her hair was not going to sting her fingers, reached up to touch it.
"Oh, nope!" I pulled her little hand away. "Let's go have a shower."
Sully's eyes got huge. "Scarlett," he said seriously, "a bird pooped on your head."
And then the three of us laughed and laughed and laughed and one of us went off to have a shower.
My coffee got cold and I'm finally drinking it now, six hours later.
It feels weird to celebrate nice things right now. Not like I feel guilty and am actively trying not to celebrate, it's just that the nice things don't feel like they matter very much. It's like my house is on fire and I'm sitting on the front lawn watching it burn down and my neighbor calls across the street, "Hey! You've done such a nice job with that flower garden!" And I look at the flower garden and think, yeah, I'm happy with how that turned out...but how long before it's on fire too?
(This analogy is a little bit absurd for me to use because I don't exactly do flower gardens. It's like when I was hoisting my grocery bags into the shopping cart yesterday at the grocery store and I said to the cashier, "Well, the gym may be closed but there's my workout for today!" The gym may be closed. My workout for today. As though I am a person who has actually noticed that the gym is closed. As though I am a person who lifts things just so I will later be able to lift heavier things. And, anyway, since when do I make jokes like this to cashiers? It's only been a month of isolation! Do social skills really deteriorate thatfast?)
Anyway. I'm thinking about this stuff because Sorry I Missed You is coming out in about a month and a half and I'm trying to figure out how to feel about it and how to celebrate it and how to promote it and all that. I saw someone on the internet the other day—on Twitter or Reddit or someplace—talking about an author whose book had gotten cancelled when their publishing house folded (due to, obviously, the Current Situation). They said, "It's so tacky to be complaining about losing your book deal when people around you are losing actual jobs."
I wanted to fight them, honestly. But I couldn't figure out if I was mad because I thought they were wrong or if I was mad because I thought they were right. I've had fleeting worries about my pub date getting pushed back or about the paperbacks sitting unopened in a warehouse until 2022, and I've wondered if it was wrong for me to feel anxious about my books in light of EVERYTHING.
(Why yes, I am going out of my way not to refer to What's Going On by its actual name.)
Is it tacky to worry about decreased sales? Is it tacky to tell people your book is discounted or up for preorder or available now for curb-side pickup at your local indie?
I mean, it feels tacky, just because I'm not a person who, at the best of times, would stand up on a picnic bench in the middle of a crowded park (aw, remember crowded parks?) and yell at people to look at me and buy my stuff.
But also, this...is my actual job. And the people who've worked so hard on the production of this book, from my agent to my editors to the designers (etc, etc, etc; there are so many people involved here)—it's their job too. And we've all been working on this thing for a while now with the hopes that it will pay off in the end and I guess where I come out on it is that writing books can, from the outside, seem like a pure vanity project but it's...literally how we put food on the table? So maybe the tacky thing, right now, is telling people their job isn't a job? PERHAPS.
(Even as I type that I cringe at myself. I don't want to sound whiny. I have it really good: I'm safe, I'm home, I can do my work here, and when I'm not working I have endless entertainment at my fingertips. I get that there are levels of trauma and that I'm nowhere near the top. Or the bottom. Or wherever the worst one is. I'm not trying to complain, I'm really not.)
Anyway. It's a weird time. I think we all get that. It's a weird, hard time and it's hard for different people in different ways and one of the things that's hard about it is knowing how to talk about it to other people who are experiencing the same event through even a slightly different lens. How and when to express disappointment or excitement. How to carry on, business as usual, when business isn't usual.
I guess we just do what we can with the best of intentions?
My editor emailed me last week to let me know that we got a really nice Kirkus review for Sorry I Missed You, and I guess that's what kind of sparked this whole thought eruption. I read it and smiled and told Barclay what a Kirkus review was and why it was a big deal to me and then I just kind of sat there. Last year, when I got my first trade review for V&V, I celebrated. I cried from relief and excitement. It was a milestone! It felt big and magical and important! But this year isn't last year.
That's an understatement.
I think this is pretty indicative of what this book's whole launch is going to be—anticlimactic, tentative and unreal, coated in layers of guilt and nervousness and thankfulness and distraction. Occasional spurts of excitement followed by days where I don't think about it at all. Missteps of all kinds! Overthinking and under thinking! Coffee!
Actually, that just sums up the past 35 days, book launch or no book launch.
We've been in our house for 17 days now, punctuated by short walks around the neighborhood and trips to the grocery store. Our weekdays are organized, loosely structured around work. Barclay's gearing up for, hopefully, some semblance of a landscaping season (who knows?) and I'm trying to finish edits on book 3 so my agent can maybe sell it, if publishers are still buying books right now (who knows?).
The days look like this:
Barclay homeschools Sully (and Scarlett) (sort of) in the morning while I write in my bedroom office, and then we all have lunch together, and then Barclay retreats into his basement office to work for the afternoon while I hang out with whatever children are awake.
We play games. We play in the backyard. We watch TV (I'm attempting to get them hooked on Mr. Dressup). We make stuff—crafts, baking. Sully and Scarlett play in the backyard without me.
We all have supper together. The kids go to bed. Barclay and I have set aside Tuesday and Thursday nights as "Pretend You're Home Alone" nights so I don't have to feel guilty about crawling into bed with coffee and chocolate and watching shows Barclay doesn't like and he doesn't have to feel bad about practicing guitar for three hours (not that we don't feel like we can ask for space or whatever, it's just nice to have alone time built into the schedule so it doesn't get lost). Wednesday is still date night.
Because our weekdays still feel like weekdays, our weekends still feel like weekends, and I think that's part of what keeps us sane. I really look forward to Saturdays and Sundays. We sleep in. We hang out. We drink lots of coffee. We use FaceTime to check in with friends and family. We're going to do some light backyard renovations using leftover supplies Barclay has from last year's landscaping jobs. We're reading a lot of books, cleaning the house. We're keeping it simple. We're keeping busy. We're letting ourselves be lazy.
I'm reading the news. Like, a lot. People say to me that I shouldn't read the news so much, that it's not good for my mental health, but I think those people are wrong. I mean, not that those people should read the news, just that I shouldn't not read the news. It feels somewhat like reading your own book reviews—I get why people don't do it, and I get why people say not to do it, but not reading the news, not reading my own reviews, both of those things feel like sleeping with my back to the bedroom door. I actually feel much better when I can see what's coming at me, as opposed to having to imagine it. I have a really, really good imagination.
Sometimes I'm anxious about what's happening and what's going to happen, sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I worry we'll lose our house or won't be able to afford groceries, sometimes I feel optimistic about selling my book or about Barclay being able to keep working.
Sometimes I miss normalcy, sometimes I think about the things that I want to bring from this time with me, when we come out of it.
Sometimes I worry we're not going to come out of it for such a long time, and that when we do the whole world will be different.
Sometimes I hope that the world will be different.
What else? Nothing else.
Maybe there will be something else tomorrow.
If ever there was a time to write your thoughts down, hey?
The world is on fire—even more on fire than it was before. I'm hiding in my bedroom with coffee and chocolate. People are fighting on Facebook about whether or not Covid-19 is actually a big deal, as though Las Vegas and the Disneys and international travel would shut down for something that wasn't really a big deal (I'm on Team Big Deal and I think we're winning).
Everything has been canceled.
I was scheduled to speak at a conference this weekend and at a publishing symposium in a couple of weeks. I had a birthday party to go to on Friday night and a hair appointment on Friday afternoon. I was going to go to the Naked Bean on Thursday morning and write; I was going to go to Karlie's house this morning and Kiersten's on Friday morning. And so on, and on, and on.
I started writing this blog post on Monday, but I didn't get very far. Things were happening too fast that day to write about them. I wrote, I wonder if they'll close the borders, and two seconds later Justin Trudeau did a press conference asking all the Canadians to come home. I wrote, I'm pretty sure they're going to close down the schools soon, and two seconds later, Robyn and Kaeli texted to say the schools were closed; surprise! You're a homeschool mom now!
(It has never been my daydream to be a homeschool mom.)
But that's just such a perfect picture of how things have been this week. You know what I'm talking about. Huge things are happening so fast, so quietly. You expect them but they're still, somehow, shocking when they happen. This is closed, that is cancelled, life is different, it's a beautiful day.
My window is open, Scarlett and Sullivan are playing in the backyard. The birds are out there too; everyone in my backyard is completely oblivious to what's going on around the world. That's a little blessing in and of itself: that in a global pandemic, birds and kids sound just like birds and kids always do.
One of Sullivan's kindergarten classmates lives across the street from us. Her mom sent me a few of the pages she'd printed off for her daughter to do on their first day of homeschool, so I printed them off too and gave them to Sully. I took a picture of him doing his work and sent it to his classmate's mom, who did the same for me. I showed Sully the picture of his friend working on the same paper as him and he was so thrilled about it. He noted that she was doing a better job of it than he was, and faster than him, too, and he told me, excitedly, how that is how she always is, how she's always so fast and good, and she never gets in trouble at school, and she wins a lot of the games they play in gym class. He was so proud of her, so happy to see a picture of her, and it made my heart hurt a little, that he's made all these sweet, real friendships at school and it's just done, all of a sudden.
Last week I was stressed out because no one else seemed stressed out. I wanted to go home and lock my family in but everything around here was very "business as usual" so I didn't feel like I could. I was talking a fair bit with a friend who lives in Italy, reading her blog, and it was all very sobering for me. She didn't sugarcoat it, she urged me—urged all of us—to take it seriously. But there was this disconnect: everything here was still so normal. People were still saying things like, "It's just the flu!" and "Do you want to go to that concert on March 30?"
So on the weekend, when things started picking up and people started cancelling events and the government began giving press conference after press conference, I had a day or two of incredible calm. Okay, I thought, we're taking action and everything's going to be okay. My favorite part of all of it was when companies started sending out emails detailing how they were sanitizing their buildings and making their employees wash their hands whenever they handled money. I know (from Twitter) that everyone else was getting sick of those emails but I savored every word. I wanted to print them off and make a literary magazine out of them.
(Hey. If I want to find joy in the sanitization of usually-filthy public spaces and in the moratorium on handshaking, let me have my moment. It was super fleeting anyway; now we're onto heavier things.)
My zen was disrupted by my first post-weekend trip to the grocery store. It was Monday, the day they cancelled school. Everyone was walking around looking stunned and blatantly terrified, people were filling up their carts with beans and Kraft Dinner, there were no eggs, there was no flour, no sugar, no cream, no soap, no toilet paper.
(Can I do a toilet paper rant for a minute? Huge rabbit trail, here. Everyone's been giving the hoarders a really hard time, and I get it, I do. I'm sure there are people who have stocked up on way more TP than they will need in a lifetime without any thought to the people who can't afford to stock up on stuff and I agree that that is selfish. I'm just getting tired of the whole, "Coronavirus doesn't give you the runs; you idiots!" chant I keep hearing everywhere. These people aren't afraid that coronavirus is going to make them need to use the bathroom more; they're stocking up so they won't have to leave the house for a bit, as per the CDC's advice at the very beginning of this whole thing. The ones taking it to an extreme are reacting out of fear, not stupidity—it's a way for people to feel in control of something when they don't feel in control of anything else. And it's happening alongside people with big families buying only a little extra TP, like they've been advised to, and alongside everyone in the whole world going shopping on the same weekend and hearing that the toilet paper is running out. The stores will catch up, everything will be fine, and I feel like it's okay for everyone to stop making toilet paper memes and cut it out with the name calling. This is just my opinion. If you have a different one, you should make a blog and write a post about it; I would love that because I think more people should blog, just in general, and if the toilet paper thing is the catalyst for the blogging comeback then GREAT GREAT GREAT.)
Anyway. Where was I? Oh right, "my zen was disrupted by my first post-weekend trip to the grocery store."
I had seen everyone's pictures of empty shelves, but I hadn't yet seen it in real life, so it really shook me when I finally did, maybe extra because I was in the grocery store just around the corner from my house. There was just this moment of, oh, this is not a movie. This is happening here, in my city, in my neighborhood.
And then I went home and my whole body hurt, and I realized I was tensing every single muscle I had. And then I accidentally read an article about how long this isolation might need to last in order for it to be effective and I began to worry—I began to freak right out. How could everything change this fast? I thought of friends who wouldn't be able to work, those who own small businesses (my own husband being one), family members and friends who work in hospitals.
It's not like the usual anxieties, where I can remind myself that I'm blowing things out of proportion and just distract myself. But it's also not like the usual anxieties in that I am joined in this one by every single person on the planet (besides the cast of the German Big Brother, who, I believe, don't know about the pandemic yet). There is that. There's the knowledge that Sully's little friend is just across the street doing her worksheets, and that everyone has recently found themselves staring at an empty grocery store shelf feeling at least a little bit afraid that this is going to be a new normal, and that Max from The Arkells is giving free music lessons on Instagram Live because he's stuck at home too. It's easy to suddenly feel like our house is the only house in a big blank world, that we will just be here forever, alone. But we're still surrounded by a bunch of other houses—this is a city, after all—and our city is surrounded by a bunch of other cities and towns—this is a province, after all—and our province is surrounded by other provinces and states—you get it—and how incredible is it that we all know what each other is going through, for once?
People talk about gravity when they talk about heavy stuff; they say that phrase, "the gravity of the situation," and I like that because gravity doesn't crush you, it just keeps you on the ground. It doesn't crush you, it just keeps you from floating off into outer space. It's good.
So that's what I've been trying to do when I feel myself freaking out. I let myself recognize the gravity of the situation. I remember the things that I can do and the things that I shouldn't do. And then I try not to dwell on it, because gravity is doing its thing whether you focus on it or not.
So, I'm standing in Winners. I need a new hair dryer because my old one started shooting sparks at my head while I was using it.
(Sully walked past the bathroom and exclaimed, "Mom! There's fire in your hair dryer!" And I was like, "No, it's just very hot air." And he was like, "NO! There's actually fire!" And I was like, "No, it's just very hot air." And Sully was like, "LOOK MOM THERE IS FIRE IN YOUR HAIR." Long story short, there was, indeed, fire in my hair. I went hair dryer-less for a while, like a pioneer woman. But Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't have to walk her kid across the school yard when it was -50 with dripping wet hair, did she? I bet not. After doing that a time or two, I decided I needed a hair dryer again.)
So. I'm standing in Winners. I need a new hair dryer. I have two children with me, and it's almost lunch time (which also means that it's almost nap time). This is the worst possible time of the day to go to Winners. Scarlett and Sullivan are hungry, Scarlett's exhausted, I'm about ready to tap out.
But I need a hair dryer.
I have located a hair dryer mountain (because it's Winners and everything's just stacked up in piles everywhere with the cheapest things at the bottom of the piles so as to reward a careful search). I'm sifting through the boxes, trying to figure out which one is the cheapest (my only requirement for most hair products, which is probably why my hair looks the way it does). Scarlett is doing that thing where she inches away from me with a big grin on her face. She wants to see how many miles she can get before I notice she's not standing obediently at my side like Sullivan. Sullivan is annoyed. His conscience won't let him mess with me like Scarlett does, but he's kind of bitter about it. If he can't have fun, she shouldn't be able to have fun either.
So I'm bent over a stack of hair dryers, and Scarlett's drifting away and Sully's tattling on her and I'm shushing him and calling her back and I'm sure everyone around us is annoyed but whatever, we'll be gone soon.
"Mo-omm! Scarlett's going over there again!"
"Scarlett! Get back here."
*Shrieking and laughing*
"No, seriously, Scarlett, come here."
"Mo-ooowwwmm-mmmmmm she's not listening to you!"
"Scarlett? Do you need a time out when we get home?"
"No! I tumming!"
"Excuse me, how many centimeters are in an inch?" Heh?
I look up and there's this lady hovering above me holding a tourmaline curling iron. She is very tall and very expectant, all full of confidence that I am the exact right person to answer this question right at this very moment.
"How many centimeters are in three inches, do you know?"
I have no idea and I, apologetically, tell her that. And I tell Sully to stop tattling on Scarlett and I tell Scarlett, once again, to come back here and I tell Sully that, yes, I'm hungry too, we'll be on our way in, like, two minutes. I've lost my place. I have looked through ten of the twenty or so hair dryers in this stack, and so far the cheapest option is $60. I can do better.
"Mom! Look at Scarlett! She's touching something she's not supposed to!"
"Scarlett, come here, hun, I need you to stay close, just for one more minute."
Scarlett makes a quick assessment of my situation. I am holding five hair dryers. She knows I'm helpless. She makes a break for it.
"Scarlett! Come! Here!"
"Mom! She's running! In the store," says Sullivan, very concerned, from where he is perched almost on my shoulder, like one of those little shoulder angels you always see in cartoons.
"I wunning!" says Scarlett, gleefully, from Paris.
"Scarlett, come back here, NOW. Sully, please stop telling on Scarlett," says I, trying to sound like a calm mom.
"I think it's something like 2.5. I'm fairly certain there are 2.5 centimeters in an inch," says the woman, who is, last time I checked, not my child.
I'm cramming hair dryers back onto the pile haphazardly, one eye on Scarlett, who's peeking at me around a corner.
"Um...maybe?" I say. I really have no idea. I'm the worst at conversions, especially since I got an iPhone. Ah. "Did you ask Google?" I say. And then I tell Sully to stop tattling and I go get Scarlett and tell her she can't run away in public and she's appropriately remorseful but so, sooooooo hungry, mom, and Sully is also so, sooooooo hungry mom, and I'm also so, soooooo hungry, everybody, but I need a hair dryer! And that's the only reason I drug everyone out of the house!
So we! Are going! To get! A hair dryer!
And we! Are going! To pay less than $60!
I have, like, five more boxes to check. There has to be a cheap hair dryer in here somewhere. There just has to. I don't like being a pioneer lady.
"Mom, what does that say?" Sully is tapping me on the shoulder, trying to read the back of a conditioner bottle on the next shelf over. "Con...di...con...di...ti..."
"Conditioner," I tell him.
"Mommmmmmmm..." Scarlett is leaning against me, her little head on my shoulder, her little mouth agape. "I soooooo hunnnnnnng-yyyy..."
"Mom, after we're done here, can we go to McDONALD'S?" Sully is jumping up and down.
"YEAH! MCDONAH'S!" Scarlett is jumping up and down.
"YEAHHHHH!!" Sully is still jumping up and down, but higher now. "I was right!"
There is, all of a sudden, an iPhone in my face, 2.5 centimeters from my eyeballs.
"2.5 centimeters in an inch! I was right! Good old GOOGLE."
"Mom, when we get home, can we read my library book?"
"I love Google."
"Mom, when we get home, ten I has a YOGUT!?"
"I don't know what we'd do without Google. Fahrenheit to Celsius. Tablespoons to...you name it."
I nod at my children, all three of them, one of them who is even taller than me, and I am very tall for a girl. Yes, we can read a library book, yes, we ten has yogut, yes, I don't know what we'd do without Google.
They all grin back at me, pleased, and we have a moment of perfect silence. Ah. We are all happy. We are good at shopping. I am a calm mom.
Yesterday afternoon, Sullivan asked if he could borrow my phone and when I got it back I saw that he had texted my parents their address and then typed, "YOU WILL PAY. I AM JUST KIDDING BYE BYE."
I feel as though I'm on the outside of something fairly important.
It's February 5, which means that I've missed the whole New Year's Day Blog Post thing by a considerable margin—but I'm still going to do it, you know why? Because I actually have a new year's resolution this year. Like, a serious one. And I want to DOCUMENT it. And I want people to WITNESS it. And I want you to YELL AT ME ABOUT IT if you see me breaking it.
(Actually, don't. That'll probably stress me out. But if you are a super close friend and you want to take me out to coffee and buy me a donut and gently tell me you've noticed me breaking my new year's resolution, like, yeah, do that.)
So, okay. Here's my New Year's resolution for 2020:
This year, I am going to be brave. And (this 'and' is maybe the more important part because I suspect it should directly affect the aforementioned statement), I am going to stop saying—to myself and to other people—that I'm not brave.
I think I've been talking myself out of bravery. You know how, when you're a parent, you're careful about what you say about your kids in front of your kids? Because you understand that what you say about a kid in front of them shapes their perception of themselves and can either be a help or a hindrance as they grow up. Self-confidence goes a really long way, and you know it's your job to build into it. So why would I think that talking negatively about myself in front of myself(?) wouldn't negatively affect...myself?
I know this isn't a new concept—people have been rambling on about negative self-talk for ages—but I've actually been noticing it in my own life this year.
Every time someone asked me how I was feeling about my book or an upcoming event or whatever, my usual answer was, "I'm terrified," or, "It's really scary," or, "I'm so nervous." And I noticed myself really dwelling on that even when I was alone. I'd be brushing my teeth the morning of an interview and looking in the mirror and thinking, Why did I say yes to this? I'm terrible at public speaking and I'm so shy and I'm so afraid...
Basically the opposite of a motivation speech.
I don't know when this started! I used to be a brave person—kind of to a fault sometimes. I'm the same exact person who snuck into a journalism class once because they were running the media room at the Junos and I wanted to run the media room. And I did. I ran the media room! And I was not afraid. I'm the same exact person who had a weekly music segment on a little cable show. And I was not afraid! I'm the same exact person who walked around CMW with my little tape recorder asking for interviews and meeting new people—just for fun! And I! Was not! Afraid!
But I'm also the exact same person who, for all of 2019, was just basically Jello.
And I'm not saying that 2020 is the year I start climbing up on my bathroom vanity and shouting affirmations at my reflection—oh no, no, that's not happening—I'm just saying that I'm going to catch myself when I start talking about being a scaredy-cat, whether in conversation with another person or just in my own head, and I'm going to cut it out.
I'm thankful, actually, that I have another shot at this whole book release thing. I did it really poorly last time because I was so (whispers) afraid and I kind of cheated myself out of what could've been a fun experience. Like the Junos or the cable thing or CMW—those aren't, like, huge big deals to other people, but they're personal touchstones for me, tangible things for me to look back on when I wonder if I could be brave. I can be because I have been. And I will be!
Everyone keeps saying how slow January was. Generally, when someone comments on the speed of the passing of time, I find myself agreeing (and obsessing over how WEIRD it is that the speed of a fixed amount of time, like a minute or a week, can be perceived to be slower or faster and that people can reach a consensus on that perception)—but this time, for once, I disagree. I feel like I woke up on January 1 and it was January 31 when I went to bed that night. January was like a short, quiet old lady who shuffled through the room without saying anything to anyone and later no one will remember what she looked like or if she even existed. Maybe we imagined her, we'll all say to each other. None of our descriptions match.
But if January was short and old and quiet, February is a hyperactive child with no boundaries or volume control. It jumped on me while I was sleeping, 3 AM, screaming incoherently into my ear so that I knew I should be freaking out about something but am undecided as to what, exactly. This is my least favorite feeling.
I need—need—February to chill out. There's not even anything happening in February. I don't know what its problem is.
In an attempt to keep this ridiculous month—and all of its potentially even more ridiculous successors—in line, I've finally purchased a 2020 calendar and a dayplanner and have plans to sit down at the beginning of every week and structure my life like a I'm a time architect or something, like the week ahead is a massive skyscraper that will topple and kill hundreds of thousands of people if I don't pay attention to every detail and get it all exactly right. Not to sound dramatic or anything. I might even get really annoying about it and set some kind of overarching goal for every week. Maybe I'll make lots of goals! I do like crossing things off of lists.
I fully expect this newfound organizational verve and swagger to last for all of three weeks before it completely wears me out and I remember that I am disorganized because I don't have time to be organized, not because I simply didn't know what I was missing, but I expect those three weeks to be productive and calm and I will look back on them fondly and think, I should do that again someday.
So here we are, eight days into 2020. I've gone to that website where they give you a picture of your nine most-liked pictures on Instagram from the past year (above) and it looks about like you'd expect.
I've been sick for every single day of 2020 so far. There's a blizzard. #WWIII is trending on Twitter and the hashtag is mostly people making flippant jokes about war (yikes). But I'm in a coffee shop, sitting by the window with an Americano, blowing my nose and watching the snowstorm. I'm the only one here. I'm warm. Still sick as a dog.* Listening to the Many Beautiful Things soundtrack and trying to work on novel three, which is giving me so much grief. So I figured I'd open up my trusty ol' Blogger in another window and, when my brain stalls in the book, I'll pop over here and write a sentence or two and then zip back over there. It'll work or it won't, but at least I'll feel and appear more productive. I'll look like I'm writing a novel, and maybe that will be enough to trick my brain into, you know, writing a novel.
What better time, then, to do my annual introspective study of the year behind me, wherein I use the alphabet to make note of 26 memorable things or lessons or events from that time period?
Alright, here we go:
A -A few of my favorite songs that didn't necessary come out this year but which I listened to a lot this year: Agnes by Glass Animals, Mansion Door by Shakey Graves, Motion Sickness by Phoebe Bridgers, Catch Me by Marissa Burwell, So Down by Mother Mother, Chesapeake by Better Oblivion Community Center and Harmony Hall by Vampire Weekend
B - Book clubs! I visited Sam Macaig's book club, the Newcomers Book Club, the Sherwood Branch Book Club, and the Northern Lights Book Club (online). I was super nervous for all of them, but ended up having so much fun.
C - Cracked my tailbone when I fell down some stairs. That was at the beginning of December and it still HURTS SO BAD.
D - Didn't leave Saskatchewan, not even once, that I can recall. No wait—
E - Elise, my little sister, lives in Brandon, MB now, and we visited her this summer. So never mind! We did leave Saskatchewan for a weekend.
F - Finished writing and editing Sorry I Missed You, got a pub date lined up—it was such a faster process the second time around.
G - Got started writing a third book—and, before I'd finished that one, a fourth, because I am dumb.
H - Hospital visits: Just one—Scarlett broke her arm when she fell off a jungle gym.
I - Interviews. I did quite a few interviews coming off of the release of V&V, and the reason you probably don't know about them is that I'm scared of you. Public speaking isn't my strong suit, and some of the interviews were LIVE, which meant that I wasn't even able to be edited into coherence. But in the off chance that you happened to be in Mississippi in June and you tuned into the right radio station at the right time and thought to yourself, "Is that Suzy? Because that sounds just like Suzy, and she sounds like she's going to vomit," I'm here to tell you that, yes, it was and, yes, probably. This was one of my biggest fears going into the whole publishing thing and I don't know that I'd say I've conquered my fear of interviews, but I would say that I'm improving and that it's been very good for me to be forced to do something I'm terrified of.
J - Joined the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild.
K - Kindergarten! Sully went to school and it has been amazing for him. He loves it, and I'm so, so, so thankful.
L - Live music: Marissa Burwell, Kathleen Edwards, Close Talker, Shakey Graves, Nick Faye, Steven Page, the RSO (wow, that is a much shorter list than usual...)
M - Met a lot of really great new people—most of them were, surprise surprise, book people. Book bloggers, book distributors and promoters (shout out, Thomas Allen friends!), publicists, editors, etc etc.
N - No.
O - Oh, I finally got a haircut that I really liked. Several years ago, I got a terrible haircut that had sharp, pronounced layers (I unaffectionately referred to it as my "staircut" and no hairdresser has been able to sort it out properly—UNTIL TWENTY NINETEEN. Finally.
P - Paper Umbrella hosted my book launch party and so many wonderful friends came and made treats for it and made me feel special and happy and loved. I haven't blogged about it because last summer was so intense, but I should, still.
Q - Quit being a Tourism Ambassador for Tourism Regina. Not because I hated it or anything like that, but because I just don't have the time anymore. Sad. But! Before I quit, they sent me to Swamp Fest, Folk Fest, the Forward Currents Festival, and Winterruption.
R - Read 19 or 20 books this year. Many of them were written by friends, which was fun.
S - Scarlett turned three and Sully turned five.
T - Ten years married to Barclay!
U - Underwent two routine dental cleanings.
V - Valencia and Valentine was published in June.
W - Watched Barclay own his first full season as a business owner. I watched him work hard all day every day (and most nights) and was so proud of him, of his integrity and determination. We didn't have a lot of free time, but I think I'll always treasure this summer together anyway—late nights side by side on our laptops, working really hard at our respective dreams.
X - XXXII (I turned 32)
Y - Yes! I was really successful at growing strawberries this summer—comparatively speaking. Like, compared to myself last year and the year before that, I mean.
Z - Zipped out to the grocery store a lot because I'm terrible at just, like, doing a list and buying all the things on it once a week. I'm in there twice a day sometimes. It's whatever. I'll get better at it.
The End.
*Why do we say that? "Sick as a dog?" It's not like all dogs are sick all the time. Do dogs get extra sick when they get sick? More sick than people? I'm going to google this, hang on a sec...
Okay, I googled it and apparently it's just that dogs were viewed as undesirable animals in the 17th century and so there were a lot of idioms that used dogs as kind of an indicator of how bad something really was—"tired as a dog" "dog's breakfast" etc.
