We started out the day with a trip to the dry cleaner — or rather, the storefront with a locker system where you drop off your drycleaning. There’s no one actually staffing the storefront — it’s basically like a bus stop for sweaters and dirty suits. Eventually the dry cleaning elves send you a text message saying “Come and get your clothes” and you do, no matter what day or time of day it is, it’s always open. It’s kind of magic — and another service I will miss desperately when we leave Vegas, since we used to plan our entire weekend around making a trip across town to nab the dry cleaners during the only four hours of the week when they were open and we had time to do it.
Of course, now that we can pick up and drop off our cleaning whenever we want, we still end up doing in the very same four hour window that we used to when we were limited. This is proof that humans are creatures who love predictability.
This week has been a frustrating week — between the Las Vegas mayor offering up a city of 2.2 million people as a “control group” and seeing friends and people I respected unleash their frustration on having the country “closed for business” at the moment.
I think it speaks to the human condition — whatever you think about the stages of grief, it does seem that people can easily blame governors or mayors for their frustration at not being able to do the things they are used to doing and think that since this is the only thing they can see that has changed, if you put everything back the way it was, things will be fine once more. Except a virus can’t be bargained with, of course, and it doesn’t play by any rules but its own, but that’s not what denial or the bargaining stage of grief is about. It’s about dealing with and accepting change. And like it or not, the world has changed. (That link is a good one if you’re similarly frustrated and trying to deal with people who obstinately believe that “it’s time to reopen the country” despite the fact that thousands of people are currently dying daily despite much of the country being in lockdown mode.)
Today has not been a very good one for my state of mind, friends, I’m sorry to say. Throughout this entire ordeal, I have noticed fits of disconnection and detachment, which tends to be how I experience the affects of my complex post-traumatic disorder. I keep trying to manage my anxiety by focusing on other activities that either make me slow down and center, like sitting out in the yard with the dogs, or writing a letter to a friend; or when my mind is reeling too much, I play a video game.
This weekend, my committee is reading my novel and also I have sent it to a few close friends who might be reading it and I’m getting really excited but also nervous but also ready to think about something else for a while. So I’m trying to focus my energy and build hope toward my dissertation defense on Wednesday and also thinking about how it will all be official then and I can legitimately be Dr. Bix for real, earned and stamped and sealed and final.
For right now, that’s keeping my anxiety sated.
Esteban managed his stress today by cooking a lot. A LOT. First he made steel-cut oatmeal in the Instant Pot, which was good rib-sticking fare. Then he continued his productivity by cleaning the kitchen and then making banana bread. We had each simultaneously saved a banana bread recipe that we were going to make in our joint recipe file — his was a gluten-free situation that used only almond flour, while mine was from Smitten Kitchen. First, he made the almond flour recipe and while it smelled gorgeous while baking (so gorgeous in fact that I didn’t realize what he was making and assumed he was making Tollhouse cookies), the taste was meh and honestly, not worth the calories. Feeling dissatisfied, he made the Smitten Kitchen recipe I had saved as well — the second one was far better, although excruciating that it took a full hour to bake and then had the audacity of requiring a long post-oven cool off time. The turbinado crunchy sugar topping, though, was sublime. I’m looking forward to toasting it tomorrow for breakfast and maybe indulging in a little smear of Nutella.
Now I’m craving zucchini bread though. I may need to buy some zucchini on the next grocery run — the Midwesterner in me feels that buying zucchini for bread is a crime, since clearly you make zucchini bread to use up the extra zucchini from the garden that you ended up with, or from the neighbor’s garden, or that someone dropped on your porch when you left it unguarded. Drive by zucchini-ings are a real thing in the Midwest, but I guess in the Southwest, you are forced to procure your zucchini through other means and it must be ferried here from elsewhere. Yet another moment of “What kind of fucking place is this” for this midwestern native daughter, is what I’m saying.
After the double banana breads, he whipped up one of our favorite recipes, Tater Tot Casserole. We didn’t have fresh mushrooms, so he used canned, and he couldn’t find the fresh thyme, so he used dried, but the result was still fantastic. This is one of the recipes he started making shortly after we moved to Vegas and were craving some Midwestern soul food and it is one that is most consistently requested by the friends who visit frequently. We ended up with a metric ton of it and his cooking has been outpacing our eating of said food, so we’ll probably do an angel drop at a singleton friend’s house with some of these leftovers.
We also finally watched Birds of Prey, which I have to say was an absolute delight. I kept having moments thinking how absolutely spot on the dynamic was for women getting together and kicking ass — especially the little supportive pep talks and affirmatives they gave each other during fight scenes. The only thing that didn’t ring true to me was the decision to work together to solve a problem — there was a “Hey, we all need to work together” talk and I honestly think a bunch of boss ass bitches would just see the problem and start solving it. Anyone who has ever worked with a bunch of ladies in a crisis knows this kind of weird telepathy that happens then, right? There’s usually one person who kind of takes lead, but also is receptive to suggestions (because we don’t want to be a bitch) and everyone gets shit done in the fastest way possible. Think about a situation in a bar bathroom where someone has a stain on their blouse or needs a tampon. There isn’t a moment where the women know that they need to rely upon one another because THIS IS ALWAYS HOW WE HAVE DONE IT. Anyway, the scene very much felt like it was written by committee, and the loudest voice in the room wasn’t a woman’s voice, if you know what I mean.
Also, bitches get shit done. We need more movies where bitches band together and get shit done. Maybe I need to write THAT next.
