(PANDEMIC PART 1)
Clever girl?
Don’t know for how long or how much. Decided to not burden you with the seething anger I felt constantly in 2020. The year wasn’t a total waste and had two or three wonderful points, but the year was essentially stolen by a confluence ponding of events made almost unendurable by the incompetence, mendacity, and out and out selfishness of both the highly-placed-few and the ridiculously ignorant fools aspiring to foist their victimhood on the rest of us. Because of them, this year caused me to say and think the most foul ideas that only the possibility of a follow-up visit by the Secret Service or the FBI has made me pause in writing them down.
I began the lockdown by starting the following diary because this is only going to be three or four months, right? RIGHT?
Quarantine Diary (certain portions were edited to protect privacy and avoid a visit by the FBI)
Thursday 3/12
We had our NMNH (National Museum of Natural History) volunteer meeting in a cloud of Lysol and I can still smell it out here on the museum floor. I feel like I’ve got a protective shield around me.
MLB suspended spring training and delayed the start of the season for two weeks. (Note: Of course, this was the year we had planned a spring training trip. After many e-mails, Airbnb refunded all but the Florida tax portion of the fee. The Nats refunded our tickets to the two spring training games. And we have a credit with American Airlines that we hope to use someday.)
Email from NMNH: COVID-19 Update for NMNH Volunteer: Suspending Volunteering at NMNH as of Friday, March 13th
Text message from younger daughter’s partner in NYC: “We had a lady stop us in the store to make sure we knew to get hand sanitizer and face masks. Any attempt to explain to her that face masks are for if you’re sick was totally ignored. And then she told us about how she smacked someone on the subway for sneezing into their hand lol”
I’m ready to vote for president for the woman who’s head of the flight attendants union. (Sara Nelson)
Conversation with older daughter:
Me: I don’t want to die with a tube down my throat. I don’t want to be denied my last words.
Daughter: What are those?
Me: I was gonna gasp out “I can’t believe we swept the Cardinals.”
Daughter: Don’t worry – they’ll be out of tubes.
Me: Now that makes me feel better.
Friday 3/13
Overheard and Observed
At Vietnamese hairdresser’s salon: “if you get it in North Korea they kill you.” (I have no idea if this is true but it sounds true, doesn’t it?) and this “Travelers just returning from Vietnam were not tested or even held up.” (This, it turns out, was completely true.)
02:23 PM: Virginia governor orders state’s schools to close for a minimum of two weeks because of coronavirus.
In Shoppers: Only two people in front of me but one of them has cart with a zillion individual jars of baby food and cans of cat food.
From Twitter: Field Museum in Chicago is closing for two weeks. Hope someone remembers to feed Sue.
Retail Email: Meanwhile I got an email from the Quilters Studio fabric store because fuck this shit quilters gotta quilt.
Saturday 3/14
Had to explain to husband the descriptive nomenclature of “double roll” on case of tp he purchased. Gonna mark it on the calendar the date of arrival of 48 rolls. I’m guessing we will use up by next August. (Note: Forgot to follow-up on this. Was overcome by subsequent events.)
Yeast raised pizza crust in a cast iron pan with bacon, caramelized onions and mushrooms. Delicious!
Sunday 3/15
SIL texts to checkin us. Reports the cat threw up. Shared movie recommends for Booksmart and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. That last one was remarkably enjoyable.
Souffleed bread pudding – delicious! Justin Wilson’s creole recipe with two extra eggs. Separated the eggs and whipped the whites thick and foamy and folded in separately.
CDC recommends canceling all gatherings of 50 or more for the next 8 weeks. My heart drops.
Monday 3/16
To relieve cabin fever, we take a road trip to the National Arboretum, Rawlins Park in DC, and drop off bread pudding to older daughter and SIL.
New national guidelines avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.
Stock market trading is suspended with a drop of 3000+
MLB says opening day will be pushed to July. (Note: this precipitated the canceling of all the games we had tickets to which were subsequently refunded. This was the year of refunds.)
Tuesday 3/17
St Patrick’s day with empty bars. 100 deaths nationwide, 6000+ cases. In all 50 states now. $1000 check being considered for every American. Biden may have knocked Sanders out of the Democratic race. Stayed inside all day. Completed 2020 census. FaceTime with grandson.
SIL offers to shop for us. Sweet boy.
Wednesday 3/18
Kennedy Center email canceling my concert on 4/23. Another refund.
Federal government says to avoid gatherings of 10 or more.
Today the stock market dropped to $19,000+. This is the worst. Experts are saying we need to shit (thanks spellcheck for understanding the actual nature of the situation) down the country completely for 30 days. Husband says we need to cut the budget.
Things will never be the same again. By the time travel becomes normal again I won’t be able to travel. I’m serious. Everything I hoped for is vanishing.
Thursday 3/19
I am so sad I laid down on the bed for awhile. I yell at the tv. This is the Trump Plague. Stock market recovered a little. And still people are crowding beaches in Florida. Older daughter fussed at us for going to the grocery store.
Friday 3/20 – Discovered new brownie recipe.
Saturday 3/21
Pretty much been pouting about my lot in life. Worked on taxes. Made brownies. Ate brownies.
Monday 3/23 – Made brownies for a friend and mailed. Drove to Spotsylvania and marked trees for removal. Went to a McDonald’s drive-through and got a Big Mac – sooo good.
Wednesday 3/25 – Made brownies for older daughter and SIL. Older daughter brought us groceries and beer. (Note: there was probably not enough beer in 2020. And I bought a LOT of beer.)
Thursday 3/26 – here endeth the day-to-day
Because after that it started getting real. Started realizing that nothing was ever going to be the same. Younger daughter and partner in NYC had been laid off. Older daughter and SIL were permanently working at home. No church. No quilters group. No NMNH volunteering. No movies. No baseball. Angry ALL the time. And as of this writing, more than 300,000 dead. DEAD. Which is such a phenomenal failure, I can’t even wrap my head around it.
But here are the personal good points – remember I mentioned there were two or three?:
With the advent of the necessity of zoom for church services, my minister asked me to do a reading in April. Our Household prides itself in many things, two of which are our tech savvy (ok, the husband’s tech savvy) and our apparently infinite capacity to make something simple much, much more complicated. We gathered microphones, tripods, made cue cards, and produced an acceptable 4-minute iPhone video for a reading for the church service. Rave reviews. This became a focus of activity throughout the summer of 2020 and I produced several videos culminating in one in which I turned myself into a dinosaur. The best part was, it got me out of my funk at least partially.
Having been laid off and NYC becoming a ghost town, younger daughter and partner wisely made the decision to leave. Packed up a U-Haul and the cats and moved in with us August through mid-November which was a delightful time of reconnecting since time with younger daughter had been on the slim side since they moved to NYC three years before. And the cats were an added bonus. This idyllic time ended abruptly when partner got a job in Richmond and they moved in with partner’s family in Richmond. However, until they find a Richmond apartment of their own, we get to keep the cats.
Since all travel, baseball games, concerts, and volunteering was suspended, there was nothing standing in the way of getting my right knee replaced. We had made a carefully organized trip to a friend’s Maine cabin in August, but the knee became so painful and unreliable (had to return to using a cane) that upon our return I made an appointment with the surgeon and scheduled the surgery in October. And after all – we had live-in assistance with younger daughter and partner. Best decision of the year, recovery was speedy, and while there is still some residual stiffness, it’s a vast improvement over the alternative, so much so, that the left knee may be replaced in 2021.
And finally, 2020 might have put me over the edge entirely (jury is really still out on that one) if it had not been for my grandson. You may have grandchildren but trust me, he is the paragon that all other grandchildren will be measured by. He was born as the Nats were at their nadir in the 2019 season but upon his appearance in the universe the Nats magically pulled themselves together and won the World Series. Since then his smile alone is the antidote to every kind of gloomy day. His giggle cures every evil notion. His cheerful lilting babbling is on the verge of clear speech. Now that he walks and has outdoor boots his delight in splashing in a puddle is magical. His mother and father are the best parents ever. A child this explorative and active needs much more space than a condo, so two weeks before Christmas the three of them decamped to a large community near Richmond. The new abode is a four bedroom with a front porch, deck, and screened-in porch on one-third acre, and a five minute walk to the lake.
So 2021 will see a new groove in the pavement of I-95. And maybe I’ll find a new groove or get my old one back. Hey, it’s 2021 – anything could happen.
Forced Perspective 