For when one of us goes on the job, the other hits the hay

[sovay]

I hate wearing masks. I have done it before for medical and other protective reasons, but it sets off some of the same sensory issues as certain textures or kinds of touch and a substrate of my brain just screams chokingly at me the entire time that we can't deal with these sensations and my face needs to be clear now now now now now. I have never even covered my mouth with scarves in winter. At the end of these three or six or nine months, I am either going to be amazingly desensitized or no one is ever going to be able to touch my face again. So I hope the entire goddamn Commonwealth appreciates my sacrifice and also check out these cherry blossoms.



I saw a red-tailed hawk, too, but could not successfully photograph it on either of its perches on the cross-tree of the telephone pole or the corner of the Litchfield Block.

I have a new go-to quote every time I hear that the man in the White House has said anything at all, courtesy of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's "The Paperhanger," written for the American Theatre Wing's Lunchtime Follies c. 1942–45: "Isn't it wonderful how they always believe me? It's not as though I kept it a secret—I come right out and tell them what I'm going to do. They just can't believe that anyone can be as big a bastard as I am. You know, you can't tell how far a fellow could go, with a nature like mine."

Comments

[phi]

In brighter news, I keep pointing out the cherry blossoms to Mr 2 when we go out for walks, and I tell him about how in Japan, we called them "sakura" and the art of looking at sakura is "hanami" and there are even big parties called "matsuri" for the purpose of hanami. And then he looks up at me and says a string of words that I can only assume is Mandarin, because the last thing they learned in daycare before the center closed for the plague was about cherry blossoms. And it makes me happy to have this multi cultural, multi linguistic moment with him even if I don't have a blessed clue what he's actually saying.

(For other readers who don't know me: my child goes to a Mandarin immersion daycare even though no one in our family on either side speaks it, because language learning is important to me and that's the language that was on offer in our neighborhood and with an open seat at the right time. I myself was sent to a French immersion daycare and kindergarten in my time for the same reason. I do speak Japanese, although it's rusty, and lived in Japan for a time -- not teaching English!)

[sovay]

And it makes me happy to have this multi cultural, multi linguistic moment with him even if I don't have a blessed clue what he's actually saying.

That's wonderful. Thank you for telling me!

my child goes to a Mandarin immersion daycare even though no one in our family on either side speaks it

And you totally paid it back, since there are now at least two non-Gujarati-speaking families out there now whose kids are going to keep asking for, like, more amchur on everything.