Category — Uncategorized

It started with a backup coffee pot. We ordered it at the start of the stay-at-home orders because I reasoned that if our coffee pot broke and we had to wait a week or two to get a new one, I would be weathering the stress of the pandemic with a caffeine headache. It wasn’t a big deal to order a backup coffee pot, so we did it and felt good about the purchase. We picked up a pour-over coffee attachment at the same time and felt super-prepared. We were going to have coffee come hell or high water.

The backup plan extended to a few food products and cleaning supplies. We didn’t need hand soap now, but we would need it in the future, so we picked up an extra bottle or two. I got a backup bottle of bleach so I could mix my own cleaning spray if we couldn’t get any at the store. All was well within a normal range of preparations.

Was I more “prepared” (whatever that means) than other people? I don’t think so. We had a few extra boxes of pasta. A few extra rolls of toilet paper. It felt good to know that if we couldn’t go out for a week, we’d be fine.

But then came the backup plan for the plants. The backup plants. I started obsessing over what would happen if my plants died and I couldn’t get more plants. I should get backup plants for the real plants. This would give us way too many herbs, but that could be a good thing. I’m sure neighbours would appreciate a bag of fresh basil and Linus always loves a sprig of parsley.

Which made me think that I should get a backup pig. My greatest joy right now is mornings with my pig. I show him animal videos and scratch his head. He curls up next to me while I read a book. He is my heart, covered in fur.

So I started looking at guinea pig breeders and that is when I realized there would never be a big enough backup plan to encompass all of the people and pets I love. There is no way to get a backup for the most important beings. And that is really what the backup plan is all about: Trying to keep everyone safe. Keep everyone close. This was never about pasta or plants or pigs. (Okay, maybe it was a little about pigs.) It was about trying to have some control during a scary time.

So I closed the sites and went to spend time with my pig and try not to worry.

My birthday has been a little bit of a family joke. We always do something for it, but it’s rarely on my birthday because we generally have other commitments. The last few birthdays have been lost to Bat Mitzvahs, work galas, and college reunions. Instead, we choose a different weekend and go to the beach for the day.

But that’s not really possible. And it’s hard to get into the birthday spirit this year. Our country is heartbroken, scared, and enraged.

We started the birthday festivities over the weekend. None of the festivities feel really exciting so dropping them into various days means that we always have something small to look forward to. Maybe we’ll keep it going until the end of the week.

There has been “beach” time via a YouTube beach video. Yahtzee-without-complaining while gorging on cookies. Hanging out time with my guinea pig. A socially-distant visit with my parents outside their house.

A quiet and subdued entry into 46. Which is okay.

At the beginning of the school year, I set two alarms on my phone. The first tells me the twins are at lunch and I can text them if I have something important to ask/relay. The second tells me they’re on their way home. I didn’t turn them off when the shelter-in-place order started. We now get a daily audio reminder about a lunch and trek home that isn’t happening.

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Disney World is reopening soon. It made me depressed to read about how the park experience would be different. They’re all good changes meant to keep people safe, but at the same time, I didn’t see how it would be enjoyable. Florida is hot in the summer. Being outside in Florida is uncomfortable at the best of times. Doing it while wearing a face mask for a day sounds exhausting. I also feel for the employees who need to be paid. I understand why they’re reopening and hoping people will come.

A person with a very different personality from mine could bring the fun even with the stress—but my personality is such that I need a long time experiencing modified day-to-day life before I can think about leaving my home base and seeking out fun experiences afar.

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I still cannot seem to do anything more than read books and watch familiar television shows. I get antsy with the thought of a movie. Antsy with podcasts, concerts, video games, or streaming events. I wanted to read JK Rowling’s new Ickabog book, but it’s really hard for me to summon the energy for something released in drips and drabs. The one exception is blog posts. But they’re all people I’ve been reading forever.

I’m aware that I’m in the minority with this. That most people are grateful for all the amazing distractions or artistic creations coming out of this period. I want to be in that category, but I’m not.

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As the world attempts to re-open, I love this idea of thinking of things in terms of having a contact budget. In other words, give yourself an amount of risk that takes into account what you must do (go to work, get food, etc) and once that is used up, you stay home. Some people should keep their contact spending to zero. Others can afford to spend minimally.

How much an interaction costs is measured with this: “Limit the number of people you interact with, keep the amount of time to a minimum, and to meet in outdoor settings when you can. That’s where the concept of ‘People, Time, Space and Place’ comes into play.”

So talking to one person for a short amount of time from six feet away while outside uses less of your budget than talking to one person for a short amount of time inside their house. And you go for the lowest “cost” version of the interaction you need, just as you would opt (usually) for the lowest cost version of an item you need. (Unless you are the sort who sees two identical products—one for $3 and one for $5 and says, “I’d like to pay $5, please!”)

I thought this was smart. I understand the analogy isn’t perfect, but it’s an easy explanation of risk assessment. I also thought this explanation of micromorts made things easier to understand, too.

Face masks are required in my state in stores and on public transportation, especially for people working in a restaurant or store. But, of course, not everyone is following the rule. You can clearly see that the moment you leave your home, and people are publicly shaming establishments that don’t follow the rules on the local listservs and Facebook groups. I appreciate the places where employees are wearing masks and they are making all people visiting their establishment to wear a mask, too.

We decided to try doing carryout for my birthday next week at a local vegan restaurant. Because we do all the grocery shopping every other week, we needed to know our game plan before he went to the grocery store because my birthday would fall towards the end of the current shopping period. If we weren’t going to get carryout, we needed a Plan B.

So Josh called the restaurant to (1) find out if they were open, (2) how they were handling orders and carryout, and finished the call by asking (3) if they were wearing masks. The woman was audibly annoyed with the question and barked, “Of course!” Josh cringed as he set down the phone.

I feel weird asking. I feel weird not asking. It shouldn’t be a big deal. It should just be one more thing you check off the list—are you wearing a mask? I’m wearing a mask—and yet it feels like the most awkward question at the moment.

I’m going to keep asking it because I want to know a store or restaurant’s mask policy or shopping policies before one of us goes somewhere so we can weigh the risk. But I wish the question didn’t feel so charged.

There was one perfect line in the novel Eight Perfect Murders, and it has nothing to do with the mystery at the heart of the book. On page 45, the narrator comments that “Books don’t just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself.”

I’ve been thinking about that line because there is an impulse to re-read favourite books during this time period. It’s less taxing, and you’re certain about what you’re going to get unless you’ve forgotten the plot. But re-reading takes you back to who you were when you first read the book.

I don’t remember where I was or what I was doing for most books, but there are a few that stand out in my mind. I know I read Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver while in Israel. There was a night when I didn’t feel well and stayed back in bed, reading short stories until my cousin came home. Whenever I read any Raymond Carver story, I think about myself alone in the house, curled up under the blanket with my book.

Or I once I re-read Lolita four times in a row because I didn’t have another book. We were in a city with a few English bookstores, but I was broke and trying not to spend money. So I ended up reading Lolita in a loop. I can still recite the opening of that book, and I cannot hear a reference to Nabokov without thinking of who I was during that time period.

So re-reading has the danger and/or wonderful potential to transport my brain out of this pandemic. Not just to another place in the world, but to a different version of myself. A version who had no clue what was going to happen in 2020.