Quantifying the Quarantine

Things said in April:

-You are developing a habit of feeding yourself while you are speaking a sentence.

-You won’t be having any screen-time before you get a letter in the mail to Daddywest.

-And don’t forget what I said about first and second drafts.

-Why are you looking at me? Don’t look at me, PLAY.”

-But we have to write a book about sting rays, i mean great white sharks, i mean short fin maki sharks, i mean dinosaurs.

How are you doing? Okay, how are you? BAD.

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An entry from a day in early May:

-Today is not a funny day. Which means there’s a chance that tomorrow will be. We are on a good day bad day good day bad day sequence without missing a beat. 50/50. Not too shabby.

I bought Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mister Fox from audible because the library wait list was something like 20 weeks long. It was do or die.

Naomi wrote two letters. See above. And practiced her violin. 

We broke a code in Nancy Drew’s The Captive Curse Video game.

Verity practiced her piano virtually with the lovely Ms. Armine. 

I made egg salad for lunch and read Abel bits from Richard Scarey’s What Do People Do All Day that was loaned to us by the neighbors. 

Eric’s making pizza for dinner. 

It’s Friday. The end of a long week. The end of a vacation week when the children and Eric had plans to go see his parents. I was going to stay behind because I could. 

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Now we are staring at June. The masks have been ordered. The summer camps have been cancelled. I'm digging up bulbs and wondering if my hollyhocks will take root. I ordered a Concord grape vine to plant in our backyard and I took down a chainlink fence. I ordered some cheap rugs and finally hung curtains.

There is a welcomed dullness that comes with being accustomed to the new normal. Okay fine we all say. That might be just the mood of today though. Every day is the same and also vastly different. I hear there is a vaccine being developed and meander into a realm of hope. Then I read that this virus will be with us for our lifetime.

That's when I close out the news tabs and look for seedlings instead.

I was on the phone with a friend who reminded me that the Black Death came back and back and back for hundreds of years. We laughed. Or did we cry?