New Rituals
My lunch is different everyday, but variations on a theme. A wedge of cheese, a hard boiled egg, a tiny ramekin of hot sauce, cherry tomatoes, wasabi rice crackers, nuts. Little piles in different textures and colors. It’s the only time I “cook” just for myself and I take pleasure in the process.
I use these plates that are huge and beautiful. My mom got them from this bougie ceramics shop in Brooklyn and if I knew how much they cost it would probably make me angry. They are round and flat with a tiny vertical rim in dove greys and grey-greens and a light mint. They make me happier than they should.
I no longer remember when or where I purchased this set of dumbbells, coated in pinkish neoprene. But I do know it was at least 15 years ago based on the apartments I've remembered seeing them in. I cursed them with each move, and quickly learned to conceal them from the view of whatever hapless friend I'd talked into helping me relocate my worldly goods and chattel from one Somerville apartment to the next.
It's only during this pandemic that these dumbells have ever served the purpose for which they were intended. Railroad apartment by Inman Square: doorstop. Studio in Winter Hill: Bookend. Spring Hill two-family: I think they stayed in a box under my bed for all three years. I was shocked to see them emerge from my U-Pack shipping crate when
We--my husband, and two children 5 and 7--are hunkered down with my parents in Northwest Connecticut (on Sunday it will be ten weeks). We have developed a more-or-less weekday routine where my parents "do school" with the kids from 10-2. Thank all the gods and goddesses for Susu & Pepe and these four hours.
After I get Sol started on his 17-person cacophony of a “morning meeting” and beforeSylvie begins hers, I start to make my own preparations- a cup of iced coffee and lunch (I won’t eat it for another hour or two but once I’m in the room I try not to leave cause those four hours go by so fast and once the kids see me it can be hard to extricate).
I finally unloaded it in Moab, UT in 2018. Surely I hadn't paid to ship an extra 10 pounds of under-utilized weight more than 2000 miles. (I had. Who's the dumbell now?)
Now though, they have taken their rightful place as fitness equipment. I've used them multiple times a week doing group zoom workouts with a few good friends, courtesy of Boston-based Inner City Weightlifting. The workouts are at 10 ET, 8 MT, which means they're almost the first thing I do in a given day. It's a good way to start the day.
Will this wholesome habit continue once we're free to roam about outdoors, setting our own gym schedules? If my track record with these weights is any indication, I'd say no.
This is Odette, a figurine under the classification “Toki Doki”. Located somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle between high art, fad figurine, and total rip-off, each comes in a blind box at a whopping $13-$18. During more forgiving times, Odette might have been regarded as a frivolity. These days however, she is earning her weight in swan crowns. I am a high school English teacher, and since our school went virtual, my students are looking for ways to connect outside of the traditional academic exchange: hand-in-paper/grade-please. We are all, quite frankly, tired of the old assessment dynamics, which never accounted for the conversations, jokes, and genuine connection we had in a physical classroom. If we can’t have the in-person benefits of education, we will find other ways to personalize the virtual space.
Every day, my students ask for another guest appearance from one of my five-year-old daughter’s Toki Dokis. These short, but important interludes in our class curriculum have inspired internet research. On YouTube, there are elaborate Toki Doki unboxing ceremonies, in which grown-ass adults are sobbing with excitement at the possibility of finally landing a “chaser” Toki Doki: the rarest of the collection.
Naturally, I made a video of my daughter opening a Toki-doki, set to inspirational/sad-bastard music, and sent it to the class. I think they like it. Or, they are pulling my leg and trying to divert the subject from post-modern literary theory. Either way, school is over in two weeks, and I think we can all agree it’s about damn time.