One blade of grass at a time

A few days ago, my friend texted me a question. A couple of minutes later, another text, and another a bit later. And then an accusation, because I wasn’t answering: “you’re in the garden, aren’t you.” I was. Like pretty much everyone, it seems, I am focusing a lot on my garden right now. This…

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Shopping as self-medication

I am not a shopper, typically. I don’t care about or have purses, I have one pair of shoes for each circumstance (one pair of winter boots, one pair of rain boots, one pair of tennis shoes, one pair of work boots, one pair of dressy shoes, one pair of flip flops), some of which…

Easter in isolation

Last year, from about October to January, Viv kept insisting that I forgot Easter. That we just hadn’t done anything. This is absurd, because I have favorite local Easter egg hunts (we did several), for the first time ever we had nearby family and we went and stayed at their house where we opened Easter…

March freelance totals: $4759.31

This feels gross and I might not publish it. I've published it each month, and so, I guess this is the same as always. But when people are struggling - I mean, a bartender neighbor of mine hasn't had income in weeks. Another neighbor is getting 70% of his salary. Another friend's husband got laid…

ENW April 2020: $15,700

Well, today was the day that I fell over a cliff. Not literally, because that would require going somewhere with a cliff. The figurative quarantine Covid-19 mom-mom-mom-mom-mom work from home school from home parent from home never leave home cliff. I felt like I was the embodiment of an inflamed wound, where everything that approached…

Marching on

I wrote a post yesterday about take-out and, like a couple of posts I wrote last week, by the time I got inside from walking the nutjob puppy, decided it was stupid and pointless. This has been (understatement) a very strange couple of weeks. I feel like I’m playing a new sport with no understanding…

I changed my mind about hoarding cash.

I’m no economist. I do, however, trust economists, especially those who break complicated ideas down for the average Jane. What I’m saying here is I trust Planet Money. I started trusting Planet Money from their very beginning, when they reached out through my super vintage iPod and explained subprime mortgage insurance to me. I know…

Student loan relief

I wrote a long post yesterday about the potential for $10K in student loans to be forgiven by the government stimulus package, but by the time I got inside from walking around in the dark with the nutjob puppy, that proposal seemed to have been shelved. Everything is moving so fast and also so slowly!…

Stocking the pile

It’s at the point where it’s meme-worthy: so many people grabbing toilet paper and canned goods for their stockpile that there’s nothing left for the average Jane. Empty shelves, price gouging. “Why would anybody take more than they can reasonably use?” The practice is uniformly ridiculed and shamed - why would you take more toilet…

Okay, I’ll play

Amelia is a stubborn 3-year-old who has a big heart. The stubbornness and the big heart often come in conflict with each other, and when she is being told to do something she doesn’t want to do, she absolutely won’t, unless she can convince herself to think the change of plans was on her terms.…