Blue-Footed Musings

It is Day 28 (four weeks!) since we last went shopping for groceries, and we miss fresh fruits and vegetables. All we have left are a few of sad looking apples, a questionable orange or two, and some carrots. We are considering our options for getting fresh food. We could go to the store to get it, pay a premium have it delivered, or attempt to grow it. Or we could try to find out how long we can live without it. We are fortunate to have so many options. Not everyone does.

• Without the kids’ school schedule to anchor us, my husband and I are drifting back to our normal night-owl hours, late to bed and late to rise. I like staying up late. I do not like that my workday is being shifted into the evening. But, having heard stories about unusual numbers of New Yorkers dying in their sleep, a phenomenon perhaps attributable to COVID-19, I have to look at our late waking time as “better late than never.” Whatever time I wake, I will be grateful to be alive.
• I’m way ahead of schedule on my work project. It’s 95% done, and I’ve run out of work to do on it (some pieces come from other departments, and I am still waiting for those). Assuming I remain healthy, tomorrow will be the beginning of my 3-4 weeks of working on anything I please. I am looking forward to it.
• Now that the kids are home all day every day, they make an awful lot of dishes. We keep running out of clean bowls. But they make less laundry. That evens things out somewhat.
• There was a thunderstorm here today. Just when we thought it was over, a house-jolting crack of thunder directly overhead scared the bejesus out of all of us. I was looking at a picture of fireworks at that very moment, which was sort of funny. It was a picture from the Cuteness Store, which is the art store that Livia and Marshall run when they’re in the mood to make some cash. Our household economy is still going strong, and I bought two pictures for a total of $2.25. Rumor has it that some rich guy downstairs bought over $7 worth of art!

• I wish I hadn’t gone out yesterday. It has created far too much anxiety for me. I cannot accurately judge risk under normal circumstances. In this pandemic, everything seems life-threatening. I keep thinking about every little thing I did yesterday and where I might have gone wrong. I know the odds are in my favor, and once upon a time, when I always seemed to be on the right side of the percentages, I would have been comforted by that. The odds have failed me several times in recent years, though, and I no longer trust them. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to stay home.
• In more positive news, though my sister-in-law had convinced me that it’s a fisher cat that makes the screaming sound I sometimes hear outside, I can now state with a good degree of certainty that it’s a fox. Tonight I heard the sound, opened the door, and saw a fox running down the driveway. To be perfectly honest, it was dark outside and I only saw the animal’s tail as it rounded the corner of our driveway, but it looked like a fox tail.
• In even more positive news, telecommuting is getting easier by the day. With everyone working at home now, my employers have finally taken the effort to computerize more tasks. Today they released a digitized version of a form that we telecommuters have been asking for for years. It’s a small thing, but a very good thing.
• In yet more positive news, I’m well ahead of schedule, having finished 86% of my current issue with 50% of my editing time remaining. If I can continue at this pace, I will be done by the end of the week, and then I will have the freedom to work on anything I please for three whole weeks (knock on wood) .

Today I broke quarantine. A phone consultation with my doctor had failed to resolve a health issue I’ve been having. She couldn’t do anything more for me without seeing me in person, so I went to her office today. It was a miserable, anxiety-filled ordeal. I don’t know if it was the right decision. That will depend on how it all turns out. But I do at least have a diagnosis and a prescription.

Today the children and I turned my entire office into a blanket fort. We used sheets rather than blankets, though, because I have an abundance of them and the lighter weight makes them easier to anchor. We layered blankets and pillows on the floor of the fort for comfort. Then we propped the sheets up with crutches and a tower that Marshall made with one of his building toys. The fort wasn’t tall enough for us to stand inside, but it was spacious, and it looked impressive.

The kids turned the endeavor into a competition, which they called the “Last to Leave the Fort Challenge.” Whichever of them stayed in the fort longest would be the winner. So neither of them wanted to leave, because the first to leave would be the loser. My husband joked that they were “quarantining within a quarantine.” We finally talked them into coming out at the same time for a movie (Aquaman). Though no one officially won, neither did they lose, and they both got popcorn.

Someone on Twitter recently asked, “What has the pandemic taught you that you can live without?” For me the answer is paper towels. Back on Day 7 I mentioned that our kitchen paper towel roll had run out and I hadn’t replaced it. I still haven’t, and my husband is adamant that we shouldn’t (excessive paper towel usage has become a pet peeve of his). We have a lot of dish towels, and those work for most paper towel purposes, the only downside being that they have to be laundered.

We’re not quite living without, mind you. There is a roll of paper towels that my husband uses for occasional messy cooking tasks, such as draining greasy foods. He left it in the cabinet where we store replacement rolls, so that it wouldn’t be the first thing that anyone reached for. I also have a separate roll that I use for cleaning. But we have cut down drastically. Had I replaced that kitchen roll, we would have gone through all the towels on it by now, and probably a few more rolls as well.

Have you ever woken up from a good dream and been sad when real life reimposed itself on your brain, because your dream life was just so much better? I have, and based on what I’ve heard from other people, I’d say it’s a common experience. Everybody likes a good dream and wants to stay in it as long as possible

Bad dreams, on the other hand, are not fun, and usually it’s a relief to be woken up from one. But, thanks to COVID-19, now even the bad dreams can be preferable to real life. The other night I had an apocalyptic nightmare, and waking up was not a relief. I wished immediately to be back in it, because at least in my dream apocalypse I was actively fighting against evil, instead of passively and indefinitely waiting for a formless enemy to go away. Real life is now the real nightmare.

There is some slightly good news regarding COVID-19. The numbers are beginning to suggest that the death rate for the virus may be around 1%, which is lower than previously thought. Now that there’s more testing, more cases are being revealed, and many of them are mild or asymptomatic. But, even at 1%, it has the potential to kill millions. For future context’s sake, here the numbers as of this afternoon: over a million people infected worldwide, with about a quarter of those in the U.S. Over 53,000 dead worldwide. The U.S. has lost nearly 6,000. There are 657 cases in RI and 12 deaths so far here.

According to Marshall, there is bright side to schooling at home. He said, “At least there’s no homework, because it’s all home work now.”

But neither kid has been keeping up with the work. Livia’s teacher has e-mailed me several times over missing assignments, and Marshall’s teacher called us today. The homeschooling routine is still new, so I’m cutting the kids some slack for the moment. I hope they’ll do a better job staying on top of the workload when they’ve had a little more time to adjust.