City-mandated social distancing is technically only three days old, although we’ve been doing it for more than a week now since we were fortunate enough to be able to work from home starting then.
To stay spirited, we’ve developed series of actions that functions both as a routine to “keep us sane” and a way to measure just how much that sanity has slipped. A coded system that doesn’t rely on colors or numbers. Roughly in order of plot-based to losing-the-plot:
- Reach out to friends
- Continue doing some form of physical activity. A gallon of water weighs more than 8 pounds! (This is…not useful to me personally)
- Dust bust!
- Bed karaoke
- Gather family and in-laws online at www.wordsplay.com (is it Word Splay or Words Play? Intrigue!) and then figure out how to play Drawful remotely.
- Procure a table so that the bed is not the only place from which to work or Skype
- Discover that tolerance level for wine has followed the same trajectory as the US stock market: that is, after half of a glass, my ears turn bright red and hot, just like they did the first time I had several inches of a wine cooler when I was 18.
- Fold all of the clothes and putting them in the closet, instead of allowing them to continue their typical migration pattern of washer/dryer –> floor between washer/dryer and refrigerator, sometimes draped across two table-less chairs –> drawers under the bed if they’re lucky –> thrown onto the single easy chair until its shape is completely obscured –> getting picked up and examined to see if dirty, and thrown into the empty laundry machine if yes.
- Armpit farts vs. back-of-the-knee farts: a battle royale
- A definitive and exhaustive examination into all of our possible misconceptions about the world. Is it really bad to microwave plastic even if it’s a frozen food item that TELLS you to microwave it? (We haven’t looked into this one yet but the answer is YES, YES IT IS BAD, never give me anything that has been sopping up plastic particles in a dinner food sauna for 90 seconds). Does the heel of the bread loaf REALLY contain more nutrients, or was that just a statement parents everywhere devised to get out of having to eat the end piece themselves?
- Are those stomach noises hunger, digestion, or did you eat something particularly weird while I wasn’t looking?
- Detailed descriptions of what the woman who lives in the apartment above ours is likely wearing, based on her footsteps
- Trying to plug your computer charger into your phone and not understanding why it won’t fit
- Holding a wedding for our pair of Line Friends stuffed animals, who are either dressed as each other/wearing each other’s skins, because “one of them is already wearing white and the other is wearing a (skin) suit” (we have a number of these stuffed creatures – these two from Line Friends and the others from BT21)
- How many times can we listen to/watch “My Stick” and “Seagulls (Stop It Now)” before tiring of them? (There’s a reason this item is last. The reason is: we are still listening to them.)
