Hello, fellow humans. How ARE you? For real? I’m craving human connection. Seriously, tell me how you are.
Me? I’m trying to take it one day at a time. If I start thinking about scenarios for the fall I get pretty agitated. As a veteran work-from-home person, the summers have always been challenging — especially once the kids started aging out of summer camps (which cost a fortune, anyway). I’m usually hanging on by a thread by the time school starts.
How long have we been at this now? About two months? Two years? A generation? I’m fine. Everything is fine. All is well.
Weirdly, I think sunny days are the hardest. The conflict between work and getting people outside is strong. And it’s also weird because the kids really do have schoolwork to do. However, I suspect that my lovely daughter is sometimes claiming “I have schoolwork!” as a way to never leave her room, ever. Her grades are excellent. I shouldn’t complain, right? I’m not complaining. I’m worrying. But Joe’s girls are also teens and they are also perfectly content to spend most of their time in their rooms, so I’m chalking it up to a teenager thing.
My kids and Joe’s are here on opposite weekdays. Thankfully, his girls are close in age and can entertain each other. Shooing them outside is a bit easier. My two … 5 years apart … one boy, one girl … it’s harder. They don’t have tons of common interests.
We broke down and bought a backyard trampoline a few weeks ago. I said I’d never own one … yet here we are. (Put this in the “I actually have warm feelings for George W. Bush” bucket.) A week and a half ago Benjamin twisted his foot, so he has to limit his activity. The one thing they could do together outside is off the table for the moment.
I’ve somehow managed to get myself into a routine over the last six weeks. I’ve been doing yoga and meditating every weekday. OK, I missed ONE weekday, one time, but that was because I had a work emergency that I needed to jump on. I’m proud of myself. Now that I have that part of my schedule cemented, I’m trying to find ways to add the next building block to my morning routine.
I miss my mom.
No one in our immediate orbit is sick. We’re tired of being home, but Joe and I both believe there’s no evidence to start loosening things up yet. And if we open back up too soon … what good were these last few months? We should’ve just never bothered with the stay-home orders.
Every time I start feeling frustrated, I remember that we’re so lucky. I tell the kids that we might as well be living in a castle. I really mean it. We fell on the lucky side of this equation. We still have two incomes. We have a house with five bedrooms, for cryin’ out loud, even though we have years of TLC to put into this place. We have a basement with a giant TV and video games and room to work out (even though it’s “finished” in the sense that it looks like it’s straight outta “That 70’s Show”). We live five minutes away from an excellent hospital. Oh, and, actually? We live down the hill from a literal castle. We have insurance. We can roam outside without worrying about being hunted down because of our skin color. Somehow, we drew the lucky lottery card.
I’m trying to donate where I can. A local immigrant family with no money coming in. The food pantry. The Ahmaud Arbery GoFundMe to help his family seek justice. Democratic candidates, who can hopefully dig us out of the mess that we’re in. Sending cash out the door. Hoping it makes a difference, yet ultimately I feel unsatisfied. I’m signed up to do some phone banking. But I’m hungry to do something more. Something to make a difference. As someone who used to run a food drive out of my house (like a crazy person), I know that dollars matter. But getting out of my chair is where the real satisfaction is. It’s been a while.
Otherwise … I’m writing more. I took an online satire class with Second City back in February, and it was HARD and great and inspiring … and it got me thinking in a new way. I had a piece published in SlackJaw in May and I smile just thinking about it.
Joe and I still like each other, thank God. Again, we’re lucky. Unlike the kids, we’re not isolated from our best friends. We have each other. Every day. All the time. In an unrelenting fashion. Like, constantly. Actually, we hardly see each other at all during the work day. He’s downstairs in his office. I’m upstairs in my beautiful 30-square foot sanctuary of an office, where I can CLOSE THE DOOR any time I want. Except when it’s hot. Because this room has a window but we haven’t figured out how to open it. I’m going to believe we’ll figure that out before it gets too summery in this joint.
Did I mention our little castle doesn’t have A/C? I imagine most castles don’t. Again, I’m sure we’ll figure that out.
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