The Covid Chronicles

March 16, 2020

Two people in the Rochester area have the Covid 19. One is a teacher, so people are totally freaking out. They’ve closed all the schools. Apparently this whole virus thing is a bigger deal than I originally thought. There’s a run on toilet paper and Clorox wipes. Luckily, the husband, a lifelong hypochondriac, has been amassing large quantities of food stuffs and paper goods to store in what he calls the “concern bunker,” which is actually just a couple of shelves in the corner of our basement. He’s also purchased one of those fancy forehead scanner thermometers and has been maniacally checking our temperatures throughout the day. We’ve discovered that Daniel runs hot - 99 degrees at all times. It took us a few days to come to this conclusion. I regret to write that initially we thought Daniel might be infected, so we banished him to the garage and slipped him food beneath the door. We would’ve let him stay in the basement, but feared he might eat all of the Pringles in the concern bunker.

March 20, 2020

Four days into this quarantine, and we’ve already watched all three Lord of the Rings films. I suggested we play a board game, but we watched Clue instead. The kids called it a “compromise.”

March 28, 2020

I’m sorry to say that I’ve given up reading Dr. Zhivago. It’s the same problem I and every non-Slavic reader has when reading Russian novels: the name thing. Sometimes characters are called by their last name. Sometimes their entire name. Sometimes their first name. Sometimes their nickname. It’s daunting, keeping everyone straight. I’ll pick it up again, but probably not until next winter. Dr. Zhivago is a winter book. Most Russian classics are winter books. E.M. Forster is to be read in spring, Mark Twain in the summer, and the Bronte sisters in the fall. Jane Austen can be read anytime, as can Dr. Seuss (with the exception of The Cat in the Hat, which is clearly a winter book).

March 29, 2020

It’s not been a good day. I had to put my sourdough starter, George Yeastman, into purgatory (aka the refrigerator). “They” have come for the flour. Apparently, all the hipsters banished to their homes have taken up sourdough bread baking. I’ll have you know that I was baking sourdough bread ages before it became a quarantine fad, all the way since this past September when my friend dragged me to Brooklyn to participate in a sourdough bread-making workshop. It was there I learned to harness the power of wild yeast. (I also learned the word “banetton.”) Since then, there’s been nary an evening when the smell of fresh bread does not permeate my kitchen. What am I supposed to do now, purchase store-made bread? I learned the art of sourdough IN BROOKLYN. I adamantly refuse to eat inferior bread stuffs.

March 30, 2020

Wegmans is out of inferior bread stuffs.

March 31, 2020

The children will now “attend” school virtually. Bully for them, but not so great for me. I complained about this change in circumstances to my therapist, whom I see, also virtually, on a fairly regular basis. Pandemics are not for the anxious and depressed.

Me: I can’t get away from all the people in my house.
Therapist: Why are there people in your house? You’re supposed to be social distancing!
Me: They live here!

I’m under no illusions about my chances for survival should things go south. I’m slow and pleasantly plump from all the sourdough bread I’ve been eating, which makes me a prime target for the ravenous undead. (Turning into the ravenous undead is not yet a sign of the Covid 19, but new symptoms are popping up each day, so who knows.) If the undead or ne’er-do-wells raid our house, the husband would defend our concern bunker to the death. (And the children, but especially the concern bunker.) I would make a grab for the Pringles and then call my therapist for an emergency session. It wouldn’t end well.

April 1, 2020

I fear the husband is becoming unhinged. Today, he spent an exorbitant amount of money on hand sanitizer manufactured at a local distillery. (We are still recovering from the purchase of the forehead scanner and digital fingertip pulse oximeter, which set us back a pretty penny.) I honestly thought it was an April Fool’s joke. Now he’s passing out bottles of it to friends and family like he’s Santa Claus. I refuse to use it. It smells like whisky, and it’s too watery. I’ve spilled it on my clothes while trying to apply it to my hands. Quarantine is hard enough without smelling like a saloon. I can’t wait until May, when I’m sure this global nightmare will be over.

April 5, 2020

The husband and I went to Costco. Everyone was wearing masks and being very literal about maintaining six feet of distance from other humans at all times. The place was eerily quiet. (Why doesn’t Costco play music? It would help their whole ambiance.) In the produce section, as I reached to grab a bunch of grapes, I caught the eye of a woman across the way who was also reaching for grapes. “Blessed be the fruit,” I whispered. She didn’t get it.

April 15, 2020

The library is closed and now Amazon has deprioritized the shipping of books. After decimating the independent bookstore, taking down Borders Books and Music, and continuing to mercilessly tighten its grip around Barnes and Noble, I can’t believe Amazon doesn’t consider books “household staples.” I’m very worried I won’t have enough reading material to get me through this quarantine. 

April 16, 2020

I can’t read. Concentration seems to be a pre-pandemic thing.

April 22, 2020

I’ve decided to get John a puppy for his birthday. I’ve rendered a deposit to a place that I hope is not a puppy mill. Puppies are going fast, man. The inexpensive kinds are going like toilet paper. Our puppy of choice is a beautiful male golden retriever who will be available in early May. Going to retrieve the puppy will be the only event on my May calendar.

May 2, 2020

The puppy is a golden pile of fluffy love. Last night, I slept with him on the couch. He nuzzled into my side and only woke up once in the wee hours of the morning to go to the bathroom. It was glorious. I am in love.

May 4, 2020

The house smells like dogs. I hate everyone. 

May 15, 2020

So the in-thing to do, apparently, is to make quarantine resolutions. I don’t want to set the bar too high, but I want to commit to doing something, so before life goes back to normal, I resolve to vacuum all the bugs out of our windowsills. Also, I resolve to no longer be late to couch church.

I’m late everywhere else. Especially these days. I hop in the car and realize I’ve forgotten my keys. Grab the keys, start the car. Realize I’ve forgotten my shopping bags. Back to the house to grab the bags, then back to the car. Realize I’ve forgotten a mask. This happens several times a week.

But on Sunday, there’s no excuse. My easy commute to the living room in my bathrobe with a large bowl of Lucky Charms (to savor during the service) does not warrant showing up fifteen minutes late.

June 1, 2020

I am not going to Germany. Did I tell you I was going to Germany? No longer. It is off the summer agenda. No medieval castles. No Bavarian forests. No schnitzel. No train ride to Salzburg. No Hitler and the Third Reich Munich Walking Tour. I’ve quit trying to learn conversational German. (Ich esse kein Schweinefleisch!) I put my Frommer’s in a sad lonely box in the basement and canceled my order of dirndl dresses. Auf Wiedersehen, European adventure 2020. 

June 17, 2020

We’ve been taking weekend excursions to various state parks, which are pretty crowded because everyone has the cabin fever. For the most part, people are super chill and excited to see our puppy. Jasper is a bringer-together-of-people. 

During one of our outings, the husband had to run back to the car to grab some water bottles. There, he encountered a man who was peeved people weren’t wearing their masks. Outdoors. In a park. 

“IS NO ONE WEARING A MASK?” he shouted at John, who was taken aback. John is very pro-mask, but so long as everyone remains six feet apart, he foregoes them outdoors. Good ventilation is one of the best preventative measures against the virus, and no place has better ventilation than the great outdoors. A large barn with high ceilings and gaps in the walls might come in second. 

In general, though, tensions are lower now that people can get outside. We’ve had people over in our backyard for socially distanced gatherings. Backyard gatherings require a massive poop pick-up effort. Two dogs equals a complete backyard horror show. I make the boys do it.

July 13, 2020

Part of our daily routine involves listening to Governor Cuomo’s midday briefings. The husband (a lawyer and a lobbyist, the two most evil of professions) listens to the daily whims and mandates of our fearless leader to best educate his clients, and I listen because I have nothing better to do. Apparently, the Covid 19 has given the governor the time needed to explore HIS hobbies, one of which happens to be the art of poster making. His poster, which he has made available for purchase, is an expression of his love for the state of New York. It depicts a mountain, which we as New Yorkers, I guess, are climbing together. There’s a creepy Satan-looking face blowing “winds of fear” towards a western peak. The words “111 Days of Hell” take up space in the center of the mountain. In the sky, Trump sits on a crescent moon. (The depiction of Trump is captioned, “It’s just the flu.”) Inexplicably, there’s an octopus splashing about in the far left corner, in what I have to assume is the New York Harbor. There is also water surrounding the eastern side of the mountain, which just goes to show that Cuomo believes all of NYS exists within the island of Manhattan. (I don’t know what the octopus is supposed to represent.) These are wacky times.

July 25, 2020

I am not doing so hot. I spend a lot of my day in bed. I know I am not alone in feeling so low. But I feel alone. There is no structure to my day. It’s an enormous effort to wash dishes, to fold a load of laundry, to try and keep up with the dog hair. I lie atop my comforter, curled in a fetal position, and watch the dust dance in the sunbeams that filter through the shades. I imagine each speck is the virus floating away, away, away … and finally settling on the windowsills. Which still have bugs in them.

Yeah, the kids know. How could they not.

August 5, 2020

We have come up with a compromise. Instead of the typical five-day admittance into the overcrowded and anxiety-inducing psych ward, I will do a two week outpatient program. Because we’re in the middle of a pandemic, it’s mainly a virtual program. I did go in for check-in, where they took my vitals, my history, made detailed notes about the medications I’m taking, and asked me if I ever heard voices. I don’t hear voices, by the way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean there is, if you hear voices you should seek treatment, but I’m just saying my particular mental problems don’t involve the hearing of voices. I have treatment-resistant major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, ADD, and insomnia. 

Anyway.

I have a social worker, a counselor, and a psychiatrist who is reviewing my meds. I take classes on how to live life. Some are useful. The classes are mainly based on dialectical behavioral therapy, a variation of cognitive behavioral therapy, which was originally developed for those with borderline personality disorder. They subsequently realized the therapy worked on other mental health conditions. (The class on regulating your borderline personality disorder, though interesting, wasn’t of particular use to me.) 

The other participants come and go. We all started our two-week stints at different times. There is a girl with borderline whose main goal is not to ruin her daughter’s life. There’s a gay man with chronic depression. There’s an elderly woman who is so cheerful you’d never guess she can’t leave her house without having a major panic attack. There’s an addict who has been clean for thirteen days. His eyes are sunken, but he seems hopeful. There’s a woman who lives with horrible chronic pain. She is beautiful, young, with long wavy blonde hair and a sad smile. Her pain is so intense, it causes her to gag and even throw up several times a day. Sometimes she flees the screen. She has tried to take her life on several occasions. 

There is me, who can’t speak about her children without crying.

“I’m failing,” I blubber.

“You’re NOT FAILING,” they assure me.

We all want to learn how to live. Just live without making spectacles of ourselves. 

September 8, 2020

Kids are in school two days a week, except for Ella, who is back full time. The structure helps. Jasper and I hang out. I am trying the clicker method of training, which is basically just positive reinforcement, but I don’t seem to be doing it right. He sits, he lies down, he kind of stays, but he is inconsistent, probably because I am inconsistent. He has doleful eyes. Big, watery, brown, doleful eyes. Our ten-year-old Australian Shepherd, who seemed like a substantial dog before we got Jasper, now seems dainty and shrewd, like a fox. She weighs half as much as Jasper but is definitely the alpha. She takes his bone from him and he just lets her. He lies down two inches from her face to watch, dolefully, as she gnaws on HIS bone. He might whimper. Sometimes she lets him chew on one end while she chews on the other. Most of the time, she ignores him. If dogs could roll their eyes, Kiah’s would get stuck in the back of her fox-like head. 

October 15, 2020

It has been a preternaturally warm autumn. The kids are looking forward to trick-or-treating, which is still on, as far as I know. As the weather changes, infection rates will probably increase, which means people will get all squirrelly again. The political atmosphere, the anti-science rhetoric, the racial tensions … these issues have been pressure cooking for months and months. 

On Christmas Eve in Iceland, everyone gives each other a book to read. When I start getting anxious, I think of things like that. 

November 1, 2020

The husband is replenishing the concern bunker. He’s upset we pilfered the Girl Scout cookies, which I guess he was saving for the end of the world. 

November 2, 2020

The puppy keeps raiding the concern bunker. 

November 15, 2020

The oldest child has been applying to colleges. For years, he told us he wanted to pursue a career in science, expressing an interest in engineering or biochemistry or medicine. Last week, he told me he wants to be a writer. “Like you,” he said.

I’m hoping it’s that phase all boys go through after they read “The Catcher in the Rye.” 

“You don’t even write!” I said. He was indignant.

“I do write. For school.”

I went to my old filing cabinet and pulled out several manuscripts - novels and novellas and a series of short stories - I wrote ON MY ELECTRIC TYPEWRITER throughout middle and high school. They are all terrible, but at least I was writing. And guess what? It has yet to come to anything.

Of course I will support him whatever path he chooses. Even if the path is stupid.

November 23, 2020

Despite the husband’s many precautionary measures, we have succumbed to the virus and are now isolated from the world. John is very sick, but not so sick that he can’t check everyone’s oxygen levels with his pulse oximeter. 

December 1, 2020

Everyone is out of isolation. Ella can go back to school. We’re all fine and chock full of antibodies. We also have a pulse oximeter for sale, if anyone’s interested.

December 10, 2020

So last night I had one of those inventive dreams where I woke up and immediately looked for a piece of paper. My sleeping self had composed the most haunting and inspirational Christmas song. Now, I haven’t composed an original piece since around 1985 - a short piano march entitled “The Mighty Mighty Month of March.” It was in the key of G, and it had a proud, militaristic vibe. It was also very short- maybe eight measures total.

My Christmas song, however, was an ethereal synthetic pop anthem about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. I woke up humming the chorus: “Drifting falling, floating weightless, coming ho-ooo-oo-me! Jesus is ho-oo-oo-me!”

As the fog of sleep lifted, it became apparent that the entire song, save a few changed lyrics, was a 1980s pop song about space travel. Not David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” but German artist Peter Schilling’s 1982 one-hit-wonder, “Major Tom.” I guess Germany is still on my mind. “Major Tom,” upon listening, has all the characteristics of a Christmas pop sensation.

Think “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” … but on the moon.

December 20, 2020

My grandmother lives in a nursing home, and her 100-year-old roommate just passed away from the virus. Grandma, who is nearly 97, tested positive, but has not exhibited one symptom. If you knew my grandmother, this would not surprise you a bit.

December 24, 2020

It’s Christmas Eve. Trump posted the following on social media:

I saved at least 8 Republican Senators, including Mitch, from losing in the last Rigged (for President) Election. Now they (almost all) sit back and watch me fight against a crooked and vicious foe, the Radical Left Democrats. I will NEVER FORGET!

Merry Christmas, America! (I am worried for Mitch. I mean, if an ex-boyfriend posted that, a girl could get a restraining order. Mitch should consider doing the same, or at least giving Kevin Costner a call.)

December 28, 2020

My birthday is tomorrow. The nice thing about having one’s birthday at the end of the year is that it truly feels like I get a fresh start. A new age. A new beginning. And I am hopeful. I am hopeful that as people take the new vaccine, things will start to return to normal. I am hopeful that the oldest won’t start college behind a computer screen. I’m grateful for my cautious, supportive husband, a plethora of loving family and friends, a robust concern bunker, baby Yoda, and two of the most ridiculous dogs who ever lived. 

I’m grateful for my faith in a God who supplies peace that truly passes all understanding. There is a lot I don’t understand.

The pandemic is not yet over, but I’d like to accomplish at least one goal before the end of the year. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go vacuum some bugs out of some window sills.