Notes from a Self Quarantine

Ugh, yes we did. One of our friends stopped by today — my husband offered to help him get copies of a large sized plan for some work he’s trying to get done at his house (sometimes it helps being married to a civil engineer!).

This is also the same friend that did our recent bathroom renovation and he’s also going to start hanging the 6 wooden interior doors that my husband stained. We haven’t seen him since he finished the bathroom, so the three of us chatted in our kitchen. And then his wife (who’s my good friend, not that they both aren’t, but you get it) decided to join the party, so now all four of us are standing in my kitchen, trying to stay 6 feet apart, but my darn kitchen isn’t that big.

We haven’t seen them in what feels like forever and it was so nice to just talk to someone other than my husband. Was it not socially responsible? Sure. But did it just feel so nice to talk to someone in my kitchen that is not my husband (I am repeating myself now!)? Yes! Will we spread the coronavirus by doing this? Ugh, I so hope not.

But it totally made our Friday morning and in these uncertain times, that’s totally worth it.

My husband is a man who likes his routines — Thursday evening we order pizza from the local pizza shop (the same pizza every week, by now they must have the darn thing in the oven before we call…), Friday we used to walk up to the local Irish pub for beers and burgers, Saturday he grills at home and Sunday he makes his own dough for grilled pizza on our backyard smoker. You get the idea. So this staying-at-home thing is really hard for him — sure he still makes his almost daily visits to Home Depot and the grocery store, but what he’s really missing is taking a spin class at the gym, and watching a live sporting event on the big TVs while having a crappy beer at our local 99 (he is obsessed with their popcorn!).

Today is Thursday, so we will order our same large pizza from the local pizza place and enjoy the luxury of good food being delivered right to our door. After all these years of Thursdays, the guy who delivers the pizza is practically family!

Hopefully my husband will be happy doing something “normal” for us and try not to stress about all the time he’ll be spending in the house again tomorrow. Until he decides to run to the grocery store again. Or to Home Depot, or to get a coffee from Dunks. You get the picture.

A friend of mine dropped off some live yeast for us this evening (there is a yeast shortage here, who knew??). The three of us stood in our driveway, more than 6 feet between us. It was cold this evening and her husband was making them dinner at home, so she didn’t say long. I haven’t seen her since the first week of March — we went to an author event at a local bookstore, back when we weren’t social distancing. She was only here a few minutes, but my husband and I smiled as we walked back into our house, even though this was totally out of our normal routine.

Seriously, that seems like a really long time to be stuck in the house. 4 whole weeks…

What might be even more surprising? How little I have actually accomplished around the house! Sure, I have been working remotely every work day. And I’ve been doing all my normal chores — laundry (why is it endless??), loading (and unloading!!) the dishwasher, all the general pick up that goes into daily living. But I would have thought that I would have cleaned out every closet by now! I have all this free time now that I don’t have to commute. Why haven’t I read 20 books? What about all those magazines I keep saying I’m going to go through? How about all those recipes I save on odd-sized pieces of paper and never make? That baking cookbook from that famous local chef that my sister-in-law gave me for Christmas at least 3 years ago that I keep telling myself that this is the year I am going to read it and actually bake one of the recipes! Nope, not done.

Anyone else? So what am I actualy doing with my days??

I guess I’m trying to concentrate on my job, making sure I get some form of exercise everyday (and that I get outside!), that we eat healthy, take our vitamins and drink water during the day before we switch to our evening beer. I’m trying to read a little bit everyday, somedays I can concentrate more than others. I am trying to stay up on current news, but remembering not to obsess over it (the first few weeks I did read and watch everything, it was overwhelming).

Tonight I decided to clean out the drawer in my nightstand — geez was there a ton of crap in there! I threw a bunch of old pens and papers out, and organized the rest. I now have a lidded container in there for all my different electronic chargers! I never would have thought of that before! It looks so clean and organized, like I’ll actually be able to open the drawer and find something…who knew?

Maybe I’ll do the same to another drawer tomorrow evening…

Our 11th wedding anniversary is this weekend. Typically we’d go and do something fun to celebrate — maybe we’d find a local craft beer festival and go out for a nice dinner. Last year we went to DC to run in a big road race, visit one of my good friends and check out some local breweries.

Since it’s looking like there definitely won’t be any beer festivals or traveling this weekend, my husband and I decided this morning that we’ll skip gift giving this year too. Not that we get each other anything extravagant — I think last year I bought him some beer from a local brewery he likes (hmmm…there might be a trend here), the year before I bought him concert tickets. We never go crazy and always try to make it fun. So this year, we’re just going to be low key like the rest of the world.

Until he went to the grocery store this afternoon (because he can’t stay home) and found me the perfect anniversary present!!

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Now that’s an anniversary present!! And I can now give him a present too — since he found the toilet paper I prefer, I will stop using the tp that he likes. What an anniversary!!

My husband did our weekly food shopping on Saturday. While I was unloading the plastic shopping bags, I decided that it might be a good idea for me to wipe everything down before I put it away. I used a spray household cleanser (non-toxic!) and a paper towel. I sprayed the paper towel and wiped down the surfaces on all the bags, bottles and boxes before I put them away. I wiped down the pickle jar, the bag of salad, the box of pasta and the bag of pretzels. I washed the blueberries, the tomatoes and the asparagus in the sink and threw away the packaging they came in. I even wiped down the outside of the plastic bag that our potatoes came in, but not the potatoes themselves. I guess I figured the hot boiling water would take care of that for us.

I threw away all the plastic shopping bags — our state has gone plastic-bag free. We are now supposed tp use reusable bags or pay 5 cents for brown paper bags, but with the current situation, the stores are allowed to use the plastic bags again during this pandemic. Normally I would save all those plastic bags to line my bathroom trash cans or my husband would use them for his lunch bag. Not anymore, they went right in the trash.

After I put all the wiped down items away, I sprayed all the countertops with cleaner and wiped them all down. Everything sparkled and I kind of felt good for putting in the effort. Sure it took me an extra 15 minutes to go through this process, but I was protecting the health of my family.

Tonight my husband stopped at the liquor store and picked up a few bottles of wine. I unpacked the bag, and restocked our wine cabinet. It was only afterwards that I realized I didn’t wipe down a single thing…and I felt pretty silly that I had made such a big production two days before, but not today. Maybe I just figured the alcohol would kill all the germs?

Today is Easter Sunday. Now normally I would go to Easter Mass — typically by myself, because my husband doesn’t like to go. Most families show up to church in bright fancy clothes, typically I show up in yoga pants and a sweater (and I might have just come from a hot yoga class, don’t judge me, I put deodorant on!).

This year, I tried to watch a YouTube recording of an Easter Mass done at the church I grew up in. I got half way through it. And I have decided that for me to actually enjoy Mass, I need to physically be there, not to watch it on my iPad. I was too fidgety to just sit and watch — I emptied the dishwasher and changed the sheets on our bed (don’t tell my mom!). And I didn’t watch the whole thing. There is still time…

I did make sure I went outside today, the weather was so beautiful — I went for a run and then I repotted most of the plants in my living room. They needed it! I called my mom and I texted with a few friends. I pulled out a simple recipe for sauce that my grandmother used to make every year for her Easter ham. Hopefully I will be able to make it just like she did — that will make me feel like it’s Easter. And after dinner, I will rip open that bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs that I have been hiding in our pantry — I give up chocolate every Lent. And as I enjoy my favorite candy after 40 days, I will remember that even though today was not the Easter I am used to, it was still a good, healthy day for our household, and next year will be even better because I’m positive that we will be able to be with family and friends.

It was definitely spring-like weather here today! Sunny, about 60 degrees, but the wind was crazy! My whole attitude changes when the weather gets warmer. And with everything that’s going on outside my front door right now, I will take anything positive!

We pulled out the patio cushions this afternoon — this is a record for us, usually we’re dragging them out mid-May. Not that we don’t like to sit outside, it’s just normally we run around like crazy people on the weekends trying to get stuff done that we just can’t get to during the work week. There’s a positive about being stuck at home — patio cushions in the beginning of April. And now because we live in New England, watch us get two feet of snow next week…

And my husband started a brisket on our outside smoker last night around 11 p.m. — that meat’s been smoking overnight and all day today. It should be yummy when it’s done in about an hour!

One annoying thing happened last night — we ordered delivery from a local pizza place. I ordered a veggie calzone (last night was Good Friday and I was trying to be a good Catholic), and I was super excited for it. It was loaded with 6 different veggies and mozzarella cheese. My husband ordered a buffalo chicken calzone, no Catholic guilt for him. They were early delivering it, so we stuck it in the oven to keep it warm until we were ready to eat. When I opened both boxes to start dishing out calzones, there was no veggie calzone! We had the buffalo chicken one, but the other one was a steak and cheese!! On Good Friday. Not a vegetable in sight, just meat and cheese. I definitely like meat, but…on Good Friday??

I ate the calzone, please don’t tell my mother.

A couple months ago, my husband and I started the process to refinance our house — we wanted to use some of the money to pay for part of our bathroom renovation and then use most of the rest to pay for the renovation of our master bath, which we should probably do sometime next year. Although now that the smaller bathroom is done, I’m itching to do the other bathroom. Isn’t that always the way?!

So today we had the closing for our house, which in the midst of COVID-19, means we met the lawyer in the parking lot of our local bank. We stayed in our truck and he handed us the paperwork through our open car window to sign and initial, and then he returned to his car. We had been advised to bring our own black pens. My husband and I signed the many-paged document and the lawyer came back every couple of minutes (now wearing gloves and a mask) to take our completed paperwork to check if we missed anything (of course we did).

The whole process took about 15 minutes and I didn’t have to leave the car. And I wore yoga pants to this meeting. It’s a strange new world.

That done, we went back home (after stopping at the beer store to return a broken keg, but got a replacement, my husband in now happy!) and did our office work for the day. My husband bagged off early to rent a thatcher from Home Depot and spent the next 2 hours thatching our lawn. Have you ever seen one of these things? Basically it’s a big push lawn mower that has blades that pulls up all the dead grass and leaves it in fluffy dead piles all over your lawn. It’s supposed to be really good for the lawn, but there was a ton of fluffy piles after he’d finished (maybe we need to thatch more often??). Then my husband took his leaf blower and pushed all the dead fluffy grass into big fluffy piles of dead grass — 3 big ones. And here I thought I had gotten out of spring raking when he raked up all the leaves and twigs this week and burned them. Of course not!

So we bagged up all the piles into large brown Home Depot bags (and of course it started to rain!!). We now have 10 brown bags on the side of our yard that will stay there until oour recycling/yard waste center opens back up again. Wet grass clippings anyone??

But it’s done and I will say — the lawn does look nice! And my husband is happy. But he mentioned something about having to go back out there tomorrow to do more clean up. I really hope I am not involved in this…

Yes, I did because I had Zoom work meeting this afternoon — 18 folks chatting through a video conference platform on a new project. So I actually put on makeup today! First time in 24 days!

I still wore my yoga pants and fuzzy socks, but I put on a cardigan sweater with a big shawl collar that I would have totally worn into the office. But I did not put a bra on (no judgement!) — I wore a tank top that has a built-in bra, but with the sweater there was no way you could tell. At least I think so…

Now I would like to say that my skin looked so much better on camera with the makeup than it did when I went sans makeup the other Zoom times…but I am not even sure you could tell. Maybe I just have a crappy camera…yeah, that’s the story that I am going to go with.

It felt strange to put eyeliner on after all these days without it, but it made me feel good and the meeting went really well (we’d been preparing for over a week!). It was a good day.

Now I hope I remember to remove all the makeup before I go to bed tonight…I am a tad out of practice.

Yes, I was feeling a little bummed today and I’m not really sure why. Maybe it was the dark, cold, rainy weather this morning. Maybe it’s because I have been working at home for just over 3 weeks. Maybe it’s because I didn’t go out for a walk at lunch. It’s probably because I got stuck on a Zoom work call that definitely lasted much longer than it should — I realize everyone is starved for connection, but we could have really fixed that problem in 20 minutes folks…

And after work I should have really gone for a run like my husband did. That would have made me feel so much better, but honestly, I just didn’t want to go through the chore of putting my running stuff on, I didn’t feel like it.

So I went for a 30 minute walk around the neighborhood instead and boy, did that change my attitude! Just getting outside and breathing fresh air! And moving! I’d been stuck all day at my computer. And now I could see birds and daffodils! Strangers walking their dogs! So much better than sitting in the house, and I got about 4,000 Fitbit steps!

I felt so much better when I got home. And while my husband started burning the leaves and twigs he raked today in our outdoor chimenea, I pulled out some of my Easter decorations from the spare room closet. Easter is only a few days away, I needed to get on this!

My husband is going to be on excited:

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And now I feel so much better!