Notes from a Self Quarantine

It’s Friday, so that means my husband and I are going to try outdoor dining again in our town. And honestly, thank goodness for it, because it brings just a little bit of normal back into our lives. This is something that we would do in “normal” times, sure we wouldn’t be eating dinner in a parking lot under a tent, but we would be visiting one of our local establishments for beers and burgers. And yes, we can’t sit at the bar and socialize, which my husband is miserable over, but we can get out, see local people and not stare are the same walls in our house.

The one weird thing about outdoor dining with just your husband — you actually have to talk to each other. There’s no TV to watch and we already spent all day together, so there’s really nothing new to talk about…he knows all my work stories already, because he heard all of my work conversations today from the other side of my “office” door. So dinner conversations can be hard, but at least we can go out for dinner! I do not miss lugging my takeout containers home and sticking my burger in the microwave for 30 seconds because it just wasn’t hot enough for me.

It’s a beautiful night — although it’s too hot for my husband, he thinks summer should only be between 70 – 75 degrees, I like the heat, so I’m happy. We’ll walk up the street, have some beers under an umbrella, some food that we didn’t have to cook, and pretend that we are the beach (or at least I will, he doesn’t like the beach either, do you see a trend??). It will be a fun almost-normal Friday night!

This afternoon after work, I went outside to check on my vegetable garden. Things are really looking good out there — the spinach is thriving and my tomato plants are getting stronger and taller every day. I even have some tiny tomatoes starting on a few plants. My neighbor had some extra plants he couldn’t fit in his garden, so he gave them to me — I got about 15 plants from him, so I might have 20 tomato plants right now. I love tomatoes, but my husband hates them. At some point this summer, I am going to be feeding the entire neighborhood with tomatoes. Maybe I’ll be able to use them as a form of currency — I’ll give you this bushel of perfect tomatoes and you give me 5 cucumbers. It could work! And I can’t grow good cucumbers, so this would be a good deal for me.

So I water my potted flowering plants in the garden and on my back patio — they’re doing good too, they’re loving this heat. Then I notice that some animal has picked through my radishes AGAIN — cutting off the entire top of the plant, but leaving the greens on the ground. So now I have a leftover radish trying to grow in the soil without its top greens, which are now wilting on the ground next to my plants. Hey, if you’re hungry, by all means, stop by my garden and have a snack, but don’t leave what you’ve plucked to die! This is not an all-you-can-eat-buffet!

So I got out my cayenne pepper spice jar, and I shook it all over the radishes, on the soil and on their leafy greens. And then because I was annoyed, I emptied more of the spice jar over my bed of wildflower seeds, because I just planted more sunflower seeds last week and they are just starting to poke through the soil, and I don’t want someone to eat those too! And you could tell I was angry too, shaking a kitchen spice over the dirt in my backyard garden. My neighbors must think I’m crazy…

And then because I was annoyed, I took a watering can filled with water and I poured the entire can over my pollen-encrusted car, so those neighbors in the front of my house can see how crazy I am too. This is an all-time low.

Wow — I can’t believe that here I am on Day 100! Honestly, when I packed up some of the stuff from my office to bring home on March 16, I figured that I’d be back in 3 weeks, maybe 6 at the most. And here we are on week…I actually have no clue what week I am on now, it’s been over 3 MONTHS! And I am still at home, trying to do my job remotely and not lose my mind. Or press a pillow to my husband’s face while he sleeps…you know, to make sure his head is elevated enough and his CPAP is working correctly. Not because he just sneezed in our bedroom without covering his nose and mouth or washing his hands afterwards for the 1000th time…

I’d like to tell you that I’ve spent the last 100 days doing so many productive things — like learning Italian, or cleaning out old clothes from my closet, or actually reading that Julia Child cookbook that I borrowed from the local library back in February (they keep extending the due date, it’s now due on July 9, but has that made me cook just one of the recipes? Nope!). I haven’t even read as many books as I would have thought I could being stuck at home, but I’ve certainly purchased plenty of new hardcover books! Maybe it’s because I don’t have a commute any more — that’s where I did most of my reading apparently.

Things I have learned during the last 100 days — time flies and days blend into each other when you work from home. I’ll start out the day knowing that it’s Friday and by lunchtime I’m convinced it’s Saturday — this happens to me all the time and it’s frustrating. There must be other people secretly living in my house — there is no way only two people can produce so many dirty dishes and laundry! No matter what time I go to bed, I am going to be tired the next day — I could read for 40 minutes or just immediately close my eyes, I’m still not going to want to get up when that alarm goes off. I really like not putting makeup on in the morning. And now that I have such a good tan, do I really even need it?? Wild animals will chew on my garden plants, but not really eat what they have pulled from the ground (why?? If you are hungry, just eat it! Don’t leave it on the ground to die!). And if I wash the pollen off my car on Sunday, but don’t drive the car anywhere, the pollen will be baked back on by Wednesday. Sigh.

I wonder what the next 100 days will teach me!

I’ve been trying to grow spinach in my backyard vegetable garden for about 10 years now, but every season something happens to it. Some years the seeds don’t even bother to grow or maybe a wild animal dug them up and ate them after I planted them. A few years, I’ve even gotten little seedlings, but the first big rain storm always washed them away. I’ve been trying for years. You might say that growing spinach has become my own white whale.

Last year, I actually got the seeds to grow — I was super excited! I think I even got 4 or 5 tiny spinach leaves, which I totally ate, of course. They might have been miniscule and deformed, but it was still spinach and I grew them, dammit, so of course I ate them.

Now, I’m not one to brag, but check this bad boy out:

• 

Ta da!! Look at all that full grown spinach!! That’s totaly edible!! And not tiny.

Here’s what I picked from the garden tonight:

• 

On the left is that beautiful, fabulous spinach (that I grew!!), a tiny radish, on the right is arugula and there’s lettuce in the silver colendar. Check this out! I can make a couple of salads out of all those greens, and there’s still a ton left in the garden! I feel like I have finally arrived, folks!

Let’s admire that spinach one more time:

• 

Oh, it’s beautiful, I am so proud! Now I have to go make those salads for dinner, my husband is complaining that I am not done yet…blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t he know how much effort I put into growing tonight’s dinner??

My husband and I don’t have a garage on our property, so we both park outside in the driveway all year. Our cars sit side by side during snow storms, hurricanes and the annual pollen explosion that happens every darn spring.

My car pretty much sits under a large oak tree and boy, does it bear the brunt of it. Yellow pollen dust covers every inch of my blue car from the end of April until July. Every time I think about getting behind the wheel, I have to grab a bottle of glass cleaner and a wad of paper towels just to clean off my back windshield, otherwise there is no way I would be able to see to back out of my driveway. Well, not safely anyway…

The pollen was pretty bad a few weeks ago and we haven’t had a ton of rain this month. And believe me, I watch the forecast for rain — and I’m parking my car on the street the second I see those dark clouds rolling in, because who doesn’t like a free car wash!

And the past few days the temperature has been in the high 80’s or just hitting 90 degrees, so any leftover pollen has now baked onto my car’s surface. I basically have a hard candy-coated shell glistening on every part of my car including that darn back windshield. It’s so sticky and gross that I would be embarrassed to pull into the parking lot of the local car wash. It’s that bad.

So yesterday I decided to wash it myself! I grew up washing my parents’ cars, I’m a grown adult — I can wash a car. So I pulled out a bucket, some car wash soap (it was even non-toxic!) and a multifiber cloth and I scrubbed that candy shell off! It took a few laps around and some serious scrubbing on some areas, and then I’m not tall enough to reach the entire roof, but that car got washed!

And then my husband told me that our hose wasn’t long enough to go from the water spigot on the side of the house to the driveway…so I used the bucket and a gardening watering can to rinse all the soap off my car. It took many trips from the spigot to the car, but think about all the Fitbit steps I got! And the car was finally sparkling clean!

This morning, the car had a layer of yellow pollen on it. But at least now I can take it to the car wash!

I attending morning mass at my local church this morning. This is the third time I’ve been back since places of worship were allowed to reopen 4 weeks ago. I tried to go last week too, but they cancelled the 5 p.m. service due to the past two week’s low attendance and of course I forgot to check their web site on that Saturday, so I drove into the parking lot, saw that it was empty and drove right back out…but at least I drove my car! And I tried to attend mass, I get points somewhere for that, right??

So I go yesterday and they’re very serious about social distancing, wearing a mask and using hand sanitizer. Every other pew is blocked off, there is only one entrance and two exits, there’s hand sanitizer right when you walk in and plenty of signage. The priest makes an announcement at both the beginning of the service and again at the end — they’re making every possible effort to make going to church a safe experience.

Why then did the family sitting four pews in front of me keep taking off their darn masks?? There was a father and mother, their four teenaged and adult children, a spouse of one of the adult children and their young child — they took up the entire pew. The dad took his mask off one ear and let it dangle from the other ear — he changed ears halfway through the service. One of the adult children had his mask only covering his mouth, another had pulled his mask so it was below his chin (but the loops still on both ears!), even the small child pulled the mask below his nose. And how do I know this? Because the whole family kept turning their heads and looking all over the church, so everyone could tell they weren’t wearing their masks correctly.

So why did they even bother with the masks if they weren’t going to wear them the right way? I’m not sure I get the point. Were they trying to show all of us that they are healthy and don’t have the coronavirus??

Unfortunately for me, I was so distracted by them and their various stages of mask wearing that I didn’t pay attention to the service and got zero out of it. But at least I showed up at the right time this week!

Oh, and that family — two of them exited the church out the entrance only door…

Last night my husband and I went out for dinner again. This time we did outdoor dining at the local Irish pub, which in “normal” times is our go-to place for Friday night dinner. The pub finally got their white tent set up in their parking lot this past Tuesday, but it’s definitely not as big as the other restaurant we went to on our first night of outdoor dining. The Irish pub only has 9 tables under their tent, so I made sure that I called last week on Sunday to make a reservation for 8 p.m. on Friday!

So we went last night and it was just so nice to be back eating at our typical Friday spot even if we weren’t sitting at the bar like we normally do, which my husband it really missing. And yes, I get it — after all this time together at home, there’s not a bunch new we have to talk about over dinner on a Friday night out. I just kind of spent all day with him, I have no stories to tell him, so yes, sitting at the bar a chatting with other folks would be nice right now, but that’s not where we are currently. And I would much rather sit and stare at him in silence at a table eating food that we didn’t make or have to clean up after, then lugging my takeout food home and hoping it will still be warm when we get there. And he’d rather sit at a bar, but to each their own, right.

And today, I went to my second in person yoga class! It was outside and with real people! And with an instructor I didn’t have to watch on my phone! It was a good class and I just enjoyed being out in the world again.

Things are starting to look a little more normal, and after over 3 months, thank goodness!

My husband and I had our spare bathroom renovated a coupe of months ago. The old bathroom was just terrible — dark, cramped and outdated. There’s no window or skylight in that room, which makes it appear even smaller, but the homeowners before us decided to wallpaper the tiny space in a strange print with a dark navy background. Ugh, it was just awful!

Now that it’s been renovated, it’s a completely different room – bright, clean and modern. We chose light grays for the walls and shower tile, and an off white tile for the floor. It’s beautiful.

But the weird thing is, except to use the toilet and sink, my husband and I are still showering in our master bathroom (which isn’t as bad as the spare bathroom, but will need to be renovated, hopefully next year), the spare bathroom shower has always been for guests. Not that we’ve had any of those lately! My husband has used the new tub for an Epson salt soak after a long run like twice, but I haven’t even used it.

Until today! I did a little gardening this afternoon while I probably should have been working (please don’t tell on me!) and after I checked my work e-mail one last time and logged off for the weekend, I decided to break in that new tub! I grabbed some new toiletries from the cupboard, including a brand new razor, ran the water really hot and had a nice soak! I shaved my legs, which is always so much easier to do in a tub than playing a game of Twister in our master bathroom shower stall. I used our brand new gray towels, the whole thing was lovely. I can’t believe that it’s taken me so long to really use the new bathroom. Now I’m thinking maybe this will be my Friday afternoon ritual during our quarantine! And a perfect way to start the weekend!

I went for a run today — and it was definitely hot out there! About 3 miles in, I was running under a commuter rail train overpass, and found a tiny baby bunny pressed up against the stone wall. Look how small he is!

• 

He was at the lowest part of the street, where it dips down beneath the train overpass, before the road starts heading back up. I have no idea how he got there — I can only imagine that he might have fallen from the wooded area next to the train tracks and landed on the street below. I’m sure that he was terrified, he wasn’t moving when I stopped, just his little nose was going. Yes, I stopped and talked to him, which probably scared him even more.

Should I have done something to help him? Sure, I could have picked him up and carried him back to a grassy area, but he probably would have bit me and then I would have dropped him and then he would have run out into oncoming traffic and that just wouldn’t have a been a good outcome for anyone. I did think about taking my sneaker off and carrying him back to my house in my shoe. But even if he stayed in my shoe and didn’t have a heart attack from traveling in a smelly running sneaker, what would I do with him when I got home? Bring him in the house?? Of course that’s what I wanted to do, but my husband would surely have me committed.

I didn’t have any water or food to give him (maybe I will start carrying carrots and lettuce from my garden in my pockets…) so I told him to be careful and left him there. I thought about getting in my car and driving over there to check on him later, but with my luck he’d recognize me and dart out into the street to get away from me, and that just wouldn’t end well. So I just hope that he listened when I told him to be careful, and that he found the strength to hop a little ways up the sidewalk until he found the woods again.

Today I went to Target to buy Father’s Day cards. Yes, Father’s Day is this Sunday and yes, I already went to Target last week to purchase Father’s Day cards. Typically, I purchase all the cards and presents for holidays such as Father’s Day, birthdays and Christmas. When we got married, my husband declared that I was now “Vice President in Charge of Communications” which is a fancy way of him saying that he’s not going to buy a damn present or card again. I’m really good at buying presents, so I don’t really mind. I’m not as good at purchasing cards, because they never say what I want them to say, but whatever.

When I went to Target last week, I bought 4 Father’s Day cards. Now I typically don’t show my husband the cards and gifts that I purchase, I just mail them out and he pretends to know what I send. But something made me show him the 4 card choices yesterday. And it’s a good thing, because he didn’t like any of them. I’m not sure what made me show him the cards, maybe it’s because I am mailing a card to his stepfather, not his biological father, and I’m not sure if I am checking the correct box with my card choice.

So I went back today and picked out two additional cards (yes, I am a martyr.). He hasn’t looked at them yet, but he better hurry up — Father’s Day is Sunday and tomorrow is already Thursday. Thank goodness I already mailed my dad his card!