Taking stock after nearly a month of isolation. My last social activities were on the first weekend of this month. I got together with some neighborhood friends for a musical jam on Feb 29 and then joined a neighborhood singing group on Mar 1. I went to the supermarket on Mar 2, voted on Mar 3, and went to the supermarket again on Mar 9. I took a short walk yesterday. Other than that I’ve been in my house the whole month. I’m over the initial wave of panic that shook me from the 12th through the 15th, and am starting to settle into life in my little cocoon. I picked my exercise routine up again this morning for the first time after completely exhausting myself with frantic calisthenics on the 12th.
In some ways, not much has changed in my life yet: I’ve been working from home and practicing my other pursuits largely at home for years. Now I’m just spending more time in that same familiar place. But it all feels different when you’re trapped there; when you don’t know when you’ll be able to see friends and family again; when you don’t know if you or someone you love might get sick; when the world is collapsing around you.
I’ve heard some people joking that for introverts, “social distancing” is a way of life whether there’s a pandemic or not. But as an introvert, I can say that nothing about today’s requirement for social distancing feels comfortable or natural. I may not want to socialize as often, or for as long as an extrovert would, but socializing is just as important to me.
I’ve been washing my hands so much that the skin around my knuckles is getting red and cracked. Perhaps all this washing is overkill because I’m not going out, so presumably my chances of having the virus on my hands are slim, but I’m still receiving packages, and handling the things from inside the packages, and with reports that the virus can live on surfaces for several days, I find it hard to judge the right level of precaution. There are articles that say you can’t get coronavirus from a package and other articles that say the virus can live on cardboard for a day and plastic for three days. As for my skin, I was going to order some moisturizer but I remembered I have two jars of coconut oil in the cupboard so I started using that and it’s helping.
I think I’ve gotten pretty good at not touching my face. When I don’t rub my eyes at all throughout the day, they feel dry and start stinging, and there can be an accumulation of goop. Showering in the morning is now the one time I really touch my face and that has become such a highly anticipated and relieving moment.
My meals these days are made from the ingredients I can order. It feels lazy to click some buttons online and have food brought to my door, but I feel better about it than I do about going to a crowded store, being closer than six feet from other shoppers and wondering what I might be inhaling.
Not everything can be ordered. It’s probably impossible to order a large sack of rice right now. I tried ordering a package of soap bars but the order was cancelled due to supply issues. Ditto with Tylenol.
I did have the foresight to place a large order of dried beans at the beginning of the month. And a few days ago I received 10lb bags of amaranth, lentils, split peas, and farro. And yesterday I ordered a 23lb bucket of rolled oats and a 32lb bucket of teff (indeed, all the rice buckets were sold out). I suppose cooking is one of the few things about the pandemic that I actually feel prepared for. I love lentils, grains, and beans, and now is the time to savor them. While I’ve always tried to buy staples in bulk as opposed to in little plastic bags, I haven’t always been consistent about it; now I’m finally doing it.
I’m running through paper towels like crazy with all the washing and hand-drying I’m doing, so I ordered 100 cheap cotton handkerchiefs and I’m planning to use them instead of paper towels from now on.
In my household, in normal times, having avocado toast for dinner would probably be considered as just a little bit of a disappointment; the kind of dinner you make when you’re in a rush, not as satisfying as cooking a full or “proper” meal, and not as fun as going out. But my partner and I had avocado toast for dinner the other day, and I wondered if we might look back on that meal as a rare luxury. The avocado came from Mexico. Are we really going to keep being able to get these delivered to our doorstep as the world shuts down? The Mestemacher rye bread came from Germany. It comes in sealed plastic bag and it has a long shelf life, so you can keep it in the cupboard for times when you’re out of fresh bread. It’s a good staple for a pandemic. But it’s selling out – last time I tried to order it, only one bag was available. The tomatoes came from Backyard Farms in Maine. They’re fresh produce and I didn’t know who handled them so I washed each one with soap. We added some mashed yam to our avocado toast. I’m not sure where the yam came from but apparently lots of US yams are from Louisiana. How easy is going to be to have yams magically appear on our doorstep as the pandemic continues? We added garlic powder, salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and dried onion flakes. It won’t take long to run out of all these things. Our humble avocado toast just might be one of the more extravagant and widely-sourced dinners we eat in long time. Or it might not. Perhaps the food supply chain will keep humming along as everything else shuts down, and all these ingredients will remain easy to get. Who knows what’s going to happen?
I spent an hour today putting together my next large grocery order. When I was ready to checkout, the system asked me to select a delivery date before I could continue. There were two delivery options: 1) Today: NOT AVAILABLE, and 2) Tomorrow: NOT AVAILABLE. Since I couldn’t select either of the options, I couldn’t continue. Dead end.
In a way it’s kind of refreshing for the system that promised us unlimited options, unlimited convenience, immediate gratification to break a little bit and let us feel what it’s like to not be able to click some buttons and promptly get what we want. Musing on this for a few moments, I was about to abandon my order but I decided to refresh the webpage, and when I did that, a new delivery window appeared like magic in place of “Today: NOT AVAILABLE.” Now it said “Today: 6-8pm.” So I selected that and my order showed up in two hours. And there I was in my kitchen, washing the tomatoes and rutabaga and bottles of kefir with soapy water.
My soundtrack these days has alternated between news and Gregorian chant. I’d probably be happier if I just stuck with Gregorian chant.
My neighbor, a retired cop, was out on his deck today playing soft rock on the radio, grilling, and chilling. He has a bubble machine that he likes to bring out. I could see the bubbles floating over to my deck, some of them even bursting against my window. It occurred to me that bubbles are made of soap and soap “kills” the virus. It actually breaks the components of the virus apart. So maybe if every person on the planet got a bubble machine and we all just blasted bubbles out in every direction for a few days, carrying our bubble machines with us wherever we went, maybe that would end the pandemic? Well, I can dream. ■