Wipe it Away

You know what I miss? 

Disinfectant wipes. 

Truth be told: I've always felt a guilty pleasure about using them. It's sort of ridiculous, right? Premoistened single-use toweletts in a big plastic tub – or plastic wrapping – how wasteful!! How bad for the environment! How toxic! And yet... yet...(they are so convenient!)...I sort of love them. 

The last several months – while they have been challenging to get and expensive to buy, even when one does find them – I have been consciously repeating the refrains about the environmental evilness and unneccesary-ness of single use disinfecting wipes ad nauseam. Meanwhile, the unconscious side of my brain works on why I love them so much. 

Early on in the pandemic, Fritz decided we could make our own disposable disinfectant wipes. We saved our empty containers. Fritz found a place on online to buy towelettes that wouldn't disintegrate when pre-moistened. We mixed up our our own disinfecting solution. Noah named it "Tub of Pool" because after it's pungent aroma. And when it stopped smelling like Pool one week later, we learned all about the shelf life of chlorine. 

These attempts at make-our-own disinfectant wipes have just reinforced the brilliance of the ones I used to buy, pre-made, in the store. The pre-made towelettes have just the right amount of durability. They are the perfect size. They wipe away the hourly-accumulating mysterious brown smudges in the Wyse Household with efficiency and thoroughness. And I know – I know – I'm just foisting extra work and damage on Mother Earth when I say this...but...it's one less piece of laundry for me to do.

sigh.

For six months I've told myself to get over it, find some new methods, grow a spine. But it's just not happening. If only I could wipe away my addiction as easily as the brown smudges in my house. 

Contact, Contacts

This Stay at Home stuff just DRAGS on and on. I mean, I suppose we could start going out more, but, like many people, we don't really feel safe enough yet. Watching other states' infection rates surge, and our own state's infection rate creep back upward, the best strategy seems to be avoid contact with others. We wear masks, we wash hands, we socially distance. And we DO stay (mostly) at home. But it's really getting old. I try to tell myself this is a stamina competition, because, really, the only way I can muster any enthusiasm is by making it a competition.

There are a few reasons I've ventured out lately and most of them have to do with my aunt and her medical needs. That means I've been to the hospital and a few doctor's offices. I have to steel myself a bit before I go; I try to remember that these medical places are the last places that want to be identified as a location having an outbreak. In theory, they should be more cautious and more safe than the grocery store. In practice, I don't know...sometimes, I feel like these medical places are so desperate to resume business that seeing patients is a risk they take merely for the income.

Case in point for useless appointments - the one I had with my ophthalmologist, who refused to issue me a new contact lens prescription. It had been three years since my last contact lens prescription. (I wear my glasses a lot.) But last year, I'd gotten a new eyeglass prescription. You would think that they could have written a new contact lens prescription based on the glasses. But no, they needed me to come in for a contact lens fitting. And to test my vision. AGAIN. And after lots of fogging up of the their eye testing machine (because that happens when you wear a mask), and dilated pupils, and trying on contacts that were the wrong prescription but the right diameter, and yada-yada, they discovered SURPRISE! my eye balls are the same size they were three years ago and SURPRISE! my eyesight is the same as last year. I was pretty furious by the time I left, because it was all such a lot of unnecessary exposure, as much for the people working in the office as for myself.

I would have continued wearing my glasses indefinitely, were it not for the fact that I thought I should start running. I feel determined to keep running, just so I can say I did something worthwhile while avoiding people. Anyways: one day I went running with neither glasses (which are just inconvenient) nor contacts (because I was trying to save the few pairs I had left). Then I tripped and fell while running. Unlike my kids, I discovered it took my two-score-and-three-year-old body WEEKS to heal. I was reminded that I am old enough to be cautious about injury. AND I should probably wear some sort of prescriptive vision correction, lest I trip and make contact with the pavement again.

Random Stuff Happening Under Stay at Home Orders

Using Zoom or FaceTime:

• One kid went on a backyard campout.
• We attended a wedding.
• Fritz presented to his colleagues in Germany.
• One kid had a grill cookout.
• We played Settlers of Catan.

We've been using Costco/Instacart for deliveries. we discovered that Costco is letting Instacart shoppers enter the store and complete their shopping outside of normal business hours – which,  I think, is good. I know it's unlikely, but I do wish grocery stores would close to the general public and convert to parking lot pickup and delivery. Or maybe just half of the grocery stores. It would be so much safer for everyone, and probably a hell of a lot more efficient.

I'm gaining weight. I've decided that now is not the time to fuss over food (or losing weight). So I'm trying to keep focused on simply Eat Mostly Healthy, Get Some Exercise Everyday. The End. (But we are at the point of Needing Bigger Sized Clothing. Ugh.)

Trixie and I have been running together in the morning. Historically, I am miserable running with other people. I like to run ONLY when it is Alone Time. But Trixie, at 6 years old, had proven to be a pretty good running partner for my out-of-shape self. And she's actually into it, which is something I could never ignite in either of her older brothers. 

A funny story - Noah - age 13 - got a smart phone. (Honestly, I don't know how we'd be sane in the current situation without giving the kid his own phone).  When he got the phone, he set up Siri with voice commands. And...in the course of the last 5 weeks, Siri has stopped responding his "Hey Siri!"  Noah's Siri only now responses to Mattias - age 10. Hello, adolescent voice change. Guess AI hasn't figured out that one yet.