The word “quarantine” is getting a lot of overuse. “Quarantine” is for people who have definitely been exposed while the rest of us are technically under stay-at-home orders or sheltering in place. Mind, the net isolation result is similar, but at least I’m not biting my nails for two weeks wondering whether I’m sick or not.
My diet has improved a bit, if only because we finished the last batches of cookies and haven’t made more. I am getting bored of cheese sandwiches – and that’s saying something because I took a cheese sandwich to school every day for the entirety of elementary school. This makes me sad because I usually love a gooey cheese sandwich right off the grill. They’re just so easy to make that I’ve finally hit my limit. Fortunately, my enthusiasm for oatmeal remains.
In mask making I’ve found something I can control in a world where I can’t control much else. There’s something meditative about the assembly line construction of multiples of the same thing: first cut all the ties, then sew together all the fronts to backs, then turn all the masks right side out, etc. I’m doing something I know how to do and there’s no pressure to match colors or sew perfect seams.
It still goes slowly though because my energy levels are in the basement and digging…every other day or so. Either I have so much nervous energy that I flit about doing busywork to avoid worrying or I zone out with comfort tv and forget all of anything I intended to do. I’m hoping this week to make it to Friday without napping after work.
Saturday I attended a Zoom workout/happy hour with a number of vet women fencers. Though I was low energy I enjoyed it and realized with a shock I’d not seen most of them in almost 2 months. I really really missed them! We’re aiming for weekly Saturday Zoom meetings, and one of the coaches is offering class twice a week as well.
Speaking of Zoom, its rapid adoption everywhere makes previously inconvenient lectures and other meetings easier to attend than before. Where it’s nearly impossible to drag myself to a downtown bookstore or other whatever it’s no big deal to log into something after dinner. Last week I “attended” a talk on historic costume and an author Q&A.
In spite of it all, most people I know aren’t pushing to end shelter in place until widespread testing is available. Indeed, I’ve only heard one person murmuring about how we’ll have to open back up the economy sometime, whether the disease is managed or not. I was polite but it pains me to hear people say things like this. Ending social distancing before we have better control over this is deciding that some lives aren’t worth saving – inevitably the old, poor, and sick. Knowing that my mother would have been among those first thrown under the bus makes me take injunctions of “well, we’ve just GOT to” pretty personally.
I still get a chuckle here and there. It cracks me up that Anthony Fauci has become some sort of heartthrob! I contracted to NIAID for years and I saw him speak on a few occasions. That he’s a great science communicator is no surprise to me. That he’s being played by Brad Pitt on SNL [YouTube] is.
