“For the quarantine,” I said, “I can run the workshop via zoom.”
“Yes, I’ll run the game devs meetup on zoom. For the quarantine. Sure, I’ll do the excuse-to-create meetings, too.”
After all, it was temporary. I could run a few monthly meetings. What, just for a few months, right?
It’s been four months. Four writing workshops, eight game devs meetings. Three meetings of the smaller writing workshop, too. Four monthly interest group meetings for work. And sixteen Monday night “write-ins.” In March, we weren’t sure if we’d do it online, or maybe just this once.
As August begins, I convert into an exhausted toddler. “SOMEONE ELSE DO THE DAMN MEETINGS.”
It hasn’t been all bad. I’ve been working out every day for 20 weeks, via zoom, with a friend from Pittsburgh and a friend from St. Paul. We’re trying to drag other friends in on it with us. It feels good to get sweaty for an hour and complain about work and discuss the weather and our t-shirts. We call ourselves “The Ripped Dorks.” In twenty weeks, I’ve gone from barely being able to do a leg-raise to doing five sets of twelve.
Back in March, I itched to leave the house. I took a daily walk around the block, feeling much as I had that year I was too ill to work, even though now I was logging on remotely. I worked crazy hours, stressed out about helping CWRU transition online, about proving I was still a good worker from home. I bullied my husband into getting fancy take-out and eating it in the car, watching cold spring rain fall on the art museum.
Now I’m settled, and I wonder that I had such a need to go out all the time. I take a walk or a bike ride maybe once a week. I tend my garden. I spend a lot of time in my head, writing. It helps I have a large project on deadline. Still, I prod Brian into going “out” once a week, if the weather is nice, for a picnic.
I sewed myself a mask in late April, after making myself a dress for Easter. I used scrap from the dress and two ponytail ties. I wasn’t sure I’d ever use it, but I figured it was my job as the Head of the House that, if anyone left to risk themselves on errands, it would be me. Then John, my brother-in-law, needed to go in to his job, so I made him one, and I made one for my husband and my niece. I wasn’t sure we’d all actually use them.
Now I’m wondering if I can pick up those two CWRU-branded masks we were all promised. I’m getting “mascne” and the cloth is getting stained with skin oils.
There are so many people out. Things look normal again but I know they aren’t. A lady walks down Buckeye with a gold sequin face-mask, looking like a superhero. Popeyes is out of chicken sandwiches again. We drive up toward Lee, planing a route home Popeyes-by-Popeyes. Lee has them. I lose my cool when we’re given the wrong order, and ruin the adventure. I whine that I didn’t even want fried chicken tonight. I want a real date night, with wine and something tiny that comes with fresh basil. Brian is irritated with me. The sandwiches are good. Why can’t I keep my cool long enough to get back in line?
It’s been one week since our Popeyes adventure. I’ll know if I’m safe from contracting Covid Wednesday next week. We’ve started putting all our excursions on the calendar in the kitchen. It’s like sinking a tie point as we climb a cliff. Here is a point at which we were safe. We live in two-week increments.
Eating is a bigger and bigger part of my entertainment and thoughts. I live for the next chance to eat something salty or sweet.
Once a week, Aldi’s delivers our groceries and it’s wonderful. Brian does the ordering and it reminds him what he got last time, so yes, we’ve started getting a head of broccoli every week, but no one’s tired of it yet. I ate a tub of frosting last week just to do it.
Last month we tried a social distance party – five friends in a backyard, chairs six feet apart, watching a movie projected on the side of a garage. We brought our own food and snacks though I had a fresh box of fruit snacks so I ripped it open and dumped the snacks on the grass so my friends could approach one at a time and pick up their individually-wrapped sugars. We were going to do it again, but the news turned worse.
I photographed a rose on a fence back in March, marveling that someone, in my neighborhood, still went out and bought a cut flower. The rose is still there, dried and waiting for time to take it apart. Next week my niece turns sixteen. I had such plans for her birthday back in January. Now I’m planning simply to buy her roses.
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(For quarantine tracking, here’s how I felt back in May and also back in April. I didn’t re-read these before writing! Oh hey, I hate the first cucumber from that planter I got in May!)
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