Laurie Gould -- Midlife Mom Songs

Dear Zoom, 

Please change Gallery view so that my own image is really tiny in the corner of the screen, the way it appears in Microsoft Teams, while everyone else’s image is full-sized.   I’d like my Hollywood Square to be just big enough so that I can make sure nothing really embarrassing is going on behind me; but small enough so that the fact that I’m having a bad hair day won’t be a distraction.   Also, I’d appreciate it if you could program the video to turn off automatically each time I decide to have…

1. I’ve learned that on Zoom, reading glasses are a good substitute for eye makeup.  Makes sense, right?   They make your eyes look bigger.   Plus reading glasses are much faster to remove.   Extra hint:  if it’s a business meeting, go for the unobtrusive reading glasses instead of the rhinestone-studded hot pink pointy ones, much though those are the ones you really love. 
2. I’ve learned how to make masks!    Which involves remembering how to use a sewing machine.   (I got a whole blog post out of that…

A new song to round out the year:  Plague Song #6!

I am back to making masks. 

In April, when the CDC announced that masks were a good idea, after all, probably, my younger daughter and I went full-on Little Women, stitching supplies for the beleaguered Union troops.   Our first masks were made of whatever fabric bits we could scrounge around the house:  bandanas, Japanese gift cloths, a few disastrous efforts involving tea towels.   

Some of our early attempts were less than expert.  We call this one “Loving Hands, Made at Home,” after a favorite…

Here you go -- latest Song of the Plague:

Words, music, instrumentals, video editing and what have you by yours truly.  

If you've missed the other three Songs of the Plague, you can find them on the Videos page.  

Despite the devastation of the pandemic, we are all, always, looking for the silver linings.   Yes, there is illness and death and mind-boggling economic dislocation – but look how many people have discovered the joys of baking with sourdough!! 

Here is another silver lining:  after 55 years of hopeless frumpiness, I am finally having my fashion moment. 

I just read an article in the New York Times Magazine entitled Sweatpants Forever, about how the fashion industry is collapsing and everyone, with nowhere…

Last week, I received a fat envelope, postmarked from Arizona, from the Department of Economic Security.   Never having heard of the Department of Economic Security, I nearly tossed it; but opening it on a whim, I found the cutest little B of A debit card, festooned with cacti. 

The explanation was perfectly obvious.   A couple of weeks earlier, I’d sent in the paperwork (there was a lot of it) to transfer to me and my brother control of my recently-deceased mother’s bank account.    B of A had…

Song of the Plague #3!   Featuring the inimitable Julia Ansolabehere on the clarinet.   Other stuff done by me.  Special thanks to Steve Ansolabehere for filming the action sequence.

Sometimes when I’m washing my hands I only get halfway through the second “Happy Birthday.” 

Sometimes I only sanitize my hands before or after I touch a door handle – but not both.  

Sometimes, when I get home from the grocery store, instead of washing my hands first thing when I walk in the door, and then washing them again after I take all the items out of the paper bags, and then washing them again after I recycle the paper bags, and then washing them again after I put everything away, I only wash…

• The right number of extension cords:   four 
• The right number of plastic buckets:  one 
• The right number of reusable shopping bags:   eight 

We have just moved, out of a rental apartment in Boston’s South End and into a condo just a couple of blocks away.    Our last move was almost exactly a year ago, when we sold the rambling Victorian in suburban Newton in which we had lived for 21 years.   We got rid of a ton of stuff at the time – about 2/3 of everything we owned.   We put some things in…