Rita Arens's Blog

Typepad, you are useless. I should have left you decades ago. But, much like an AOL email address, I���m just too lazy to quit you. 

I talked to my husband about this. ���I know a person,��� I said. but the effort to clean up 15-year-old writing feels similar to an abandoned wood bench. It would feel good to purge it, but good enough to warrant the effort? One wonders. 

I am waiting to emerge from this pandemic. 

I have a third novel in me. 

I need the library back to write it. 

I nee...

Y'all. It's been four months since the U.S.A. admitted there was a problem, since I got sent home with my laptop and my oversized monitor.

I feel like I should record this for posterity, but what to say?

I have never in my lifetime donned a mask, homemade or otherwise, for any reason other than sanding drywall. Now, a mask is slung around my gear shift of my car, and I have an entire kitchen drawer dedicated to PPE.

I'm making choices about whether to allow the little angel to work (masked) a...

This week, my daughter finally got her license, a month and a week after the intended date circled on my calendar. I took her birthday off months in advance, but when April 6 rolled around, all the government offices were closed. School was closed, the sleepover was weeks beyond cancelled. Life felt cancelled. We spent the day instead celebrating her existence any way I could think to do.

As Missouri and the world cautiously peeps out from behind closed drapes, I'm vacillating wildly inside....

Easter 2020.

It's the day my daughter was due, exactly 16 years ago. She came a week early. We named her Lily, anyway.

I just watched the filmed-from-home version of SNL. At the end, they paid tribute to a crew member who passed away of COVID-19. 

And y'all, it just broke me.

We sit here in our houses, trying to make fun of Zoom meetings and not wearing pants, celebrating the Tiger King and carbs.

Trying to ignore the fact we're stacking corpses in refrigerated trucks in New York City. 

Most...

So I've lost track of the days. I remember the Friday - how many weeks was it ago? When I stood in the parking garage elevator clasping my computer monitor, prepared to work from home for however long it took. I thought it would be like a week.

I was so wrong.

Now I think it will be until at least the end of April.

I just left a ten dollar bill under a rock for my Door Dasher. It'll be the first food not prepared by us we've eaten in two weeks.

The little angel hasn't spoken in person to...

It's been a while since I've been any sort of regular blogger. But hello, 2020! What a nice surprise to remind us that sometimes journaling is important.

So ... my second surgery to end the breast cancer reconstruction experiment 2020 is scheduled for Wednesday. 48 hours from now. And I'm not sure at all that it will actually happen at this moment. Life is that fluid.

I left work on Friday, huge monitor in hand, kind of in shock. We were told we'd be working from home for the near future....

It's been 28 days since my first surgery. I was so naive about the recovery. I am historically inclined to overestimate my stamina and pain tolerance, but I really outdid myself this time. I went back to working from home full-time two weeks ago, and last week I went into the office four out of five days. I also somehow managed to bust a blood vessel in my eye and pull some part of me that used to be my full lat muscle so that on Thursday morning I tried to sit up in bed and couldn't.

It's...

Last Monday I had the first surgery in a phase of breast cancer reconstruction. Basically some of my back moved to my front via my armpit. It's as gnarly as it sounds. I've had three drain tubes trailing directly out of my skin for over a week now. Totally reminds me of The Matrix.

It's been a hard week or so. The night after my surgery I stayed in the hospital, pretty much drifting in and out of episodes of American Greed. My nurse was 15 minutes late with my morphine the first time. He...

Beloved called me this afternoon to say the wood floor guy called, like, a few months early to say our wood is in, and could he bring it over tomorrow?

Except that meant I needed to clear out six floor-to-ceiling bookshelves between dinner and the work left over from today. With MY BABBEE'S childhood memorabilia, along with my master's thesis, gifts from family members, copies of three books (one out of print) and photo albums dating back to college.

Oh, and in the space I used for eight lovely years when I worked...

The light is here longer now. 

My girl is finishing her freshman year of high school. She just got a learner's permit. She's a better horseback rider than I am and wields a mean powerpoint. 

And oh, my God, how is it possible she's going to be a high school sophomore in a few weeks?

I started this blog on my maternity leave. I started it because I didn't know how to process what I was feeling about being a mother. That totally hasn't changed in fifteen years. I still don't know how to process...