Husband says he wants me to blog because he misses reading 365 Bad Days. He is stuck in China with Dog #2 “Dot”. Dot is very catlike and doesn’t need to be petted and snuggled with. So she mostly wanders around the house on her own unless she can hear cooking noises in the kitchen. She is very fond of cheese and salmon. And bacon. I never met a dog who didn’t like bacon, until Satan, that is.

The problem with blogging during this separation, though, is that I’m not angry. I was filled with rage when Husband left for Afghanistan because I was overwhelmed at the prospect of being the only parent to three active girls who all needed things all the time like attention and permission slips and lunch money. and parenting on my own was every bit as terrible as I imagined it would be–lice, vomiting, broken toilets, hurricanes, plus the odd bombing of husband’s location a couple of times. I’m apparently very creative and funny when I’m angry.

But now, the children are grown. They mostly only need me for tuition and the Hulu password. I’m not angry that Husband is still in China–just happy that I’m not there. So what should I write about? How we put Satan on prozac but she still screams when she poops? Or how I’ve looked at my pile of unfolded laundry still in the basket for two days now and said maybe I’ll do that later? Or how I hate my fingernails because they are weak and brittle and keep breaking?

When I was in a job earlier that I couldn’t talk to the children about, Child 3 would ask me what I did that day and I would say that I rode up the elevator and down the elevator, I read some things and I wrote some things, and occasionally I met people.

But now I don’t even have that because I work from home a couple of days a week so no elevators. I LOVE working from home. I mean the pandemic was made for introverts. All the extroverts were bored and lonely and I was like finally I have an excuse to not have to talk to people!! I could go days without talking to people. Once when husband and I were in solitary confinement (Covid quarantine in China), we were each in a separate hotel room next door to each other but we weren’t allowed out of our rooms. The only way to communicate was by calling each other. Or rather by Husband calling me because I did not have to call him once, not ever because I swear he called me every five minutes. Finally I had to limit him to calling during mealtimes only because I just couldn’t be in charge of entertaining him every minute of every day! When we were in quarantine in our house, Husband asked me if I wanted to go for a walk around the living room. I said no. I was perfectly fine reading and watching all the shows I downloaded onto my Kindle. I got through the entire series of The Sopranos during quarantine in China. You can shoot me, but I actually liked the ending. I thought it was very appropriate. I had lots of free time in quarantine in China.

But here in NoVa there is no quarantine, my job is great but nobody outside the State Department understands what I do, and I don’t have any hobbies. So what do I write about? Children, I need ideas! So send me some, please. Or this will continue to be the boringest blog ever and the only person in the world who will read it is Husband because he is very lonely and bored.