Is it morning? Is it Monday … or August? It is still 2020? Is it bedtime? Naptime? Are my friends still out there somewhere? Do I need pants? The snacks are gone. We need snacks. What if they close the grocery stores? We’ll have to hunt for food. I don’t even know where tortilla chips live.
On that note, I definitely need to social distance myself from my refrigerator in order to flatten my curve. If carbs are the cure I’m already immune. I tried making bread from scratch. Much like the early pioneers, I began by going to Pinterest and typing in “easy bread recipes.”
Indoorsy
I have always been someone who LOVED to be home. To tell me I MUST stay home for weeks and not go out and about and I cannot run errands at all unless it’s an emergency? Don’t threaten me with a good time. How often can you change destiny by staying home and doing nothing? Generations before us were called (or sent) to Wars. We were called to stay home and maybe order carryout food if we were feeling patriotic.
I also worked from home back before that was even on trend. I like to think I was a young pioneer in the land of typing on a desktop computer with one hand while balancing an infant in the other. I know about scattering Goldfish crackers like shrapnel to buy the time needed for a business call. I have mad skills in keeping household chaos under wraps long enough to fool clients. My children and all their closest friends knew “the look” that meant I was on a business call and they best hush. If I had to resort to the finger snap, things were getting serious.
With all that experience under my belt, one would think I would be embracing a six-week shutdown.
One would be WRONG.
Turns out I am a person who needs deadlines. Structure. A reason to shower. If you take the underpinning of “busy” out from under me and give me endless hours to accomplish things — I pretty much don’t do a darn thing.
This is my first Pandemic and I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turns out my three major hobbies appear to be going to restaurants, shopping, and standing closer than six feet to my friends in social situations. I could not help think of all the times our cat had destroyed a roll of toilet paper WITHOUT REMORSE. As if we were some sort of bathroom tissue billionaires.
I puttered. I “konmaried” closets. We made it all the way through Episode Three of “Tiger King” before we threw in the towel. I tried the whipped coffee everyone was all about. Being a resident of the Buckeye State, I wined with DeWine at 2 p.m. on the dot some days. Okay, I didn’t really drink wine at 2 p.m. I more like “whined” when he put the state in time out but it was still informative. I planned a few projects with supplies we already had around the house. I realize the big warehouse home improvement stores stayed open. I’m just suspicious of anything that says my 60 parishioner church can’t be open but Home Depot can? No thank you.
Meanwhile, Mr. Wonderful still worked but also fielded conference calls from home. One is never quite prepared to learn she is married to a “per my last email” guy. Who knew?
I honestly do not know who offended 2020 but they need to apologize. At one point Mother Nature decided that what this Pandemic really needed was a tornado.
Shelter
I would have slept through and missed the whole thing if not for BoyWonder. He woke his sister and me, foraged for lights, and herded us to the basement. Note that our basement access is outside so we are like one of those Kansas farm families in the movies racing through the rain to duck into the cellar. It’s all very dramatic.
The tornado did touch down nearby, but fortunately, there were no injuries. We would be without power for 36 hours. I think that was just the Lord’s way of reminding us that lockdown COULD be worse. The minute the WiFi went out I was ready to run into the woods and start a new society. I have never been so happy to see the internet and Netflix return.
By the time you read this we may be coming out of the major lockdown. That doesn’t mean the risk is over. Remember to stay safe, trust God, and wash your hands. Also, don’t forget to be good to your spouse, roommates, and people you live with. Right now they could poison you and it would be counted as a COVID-19 death.
