Live your best life

If there is a casualty of this COVID-stay-at-home-so-you-don't-die dealio, it will be my sense of time. Lisa wrote about this, and I get the sense that most people are feeling this way, but it bears repeating. I have no idea what day it is. I have no idea how long this has been going on.

This is hard for me, because my brain generally sees things in calendar form. When I think about my schedule, I see the grid with dates and times and days of the week. I remember appointments and due dates and what day and time the flight leaves, and from which gate.

So to spend all of Wednesday thinking it was actually Tuesday - - well, it's very confusing. Every night feels like Friday night, for some reason. I find myself relating to the Dowager Countess's confusion about what a "weekend" is.

I have a theory. Not about what a weekend is - I actually do know the answer to that question. I have a theory about why our sense of time is so whack-a-doodle right now.

We're living in a fog of sameness. We stay in the same place and do the same things and see the same people. There aren't markers or boundaries or events that distinguish one day from the next. I felt the same way when I was on maternity leave.

I also think we're in a "one day at a time" mode, because if we start thinking that this one day is part of a stretch of 40 days or 60 days or 80 days that all look and feel like this one... I have a hard time with that thought.

So I just deal with today. Which, according to all of my zen yogi friends, is what I should be doing anyway. Be present.

Maybe present-ish. Present-adjacent. I might think a little about yesterday, or about tomorrow or the next day.

Anyway. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow ... I'm doing well, for the most part.

Today I went to Zeke's school to pick up a novel that he's going to be studying when school starts back up in a week.

Then I went to the grocery store. There are still no paper products to be had, but everything else is in stock. Except yeast, because apparently everyone has decided to spend the apocalypse baking.

I actually mocked a guy in front of me at the checkout at Target a few weeks ago because his cart was loaded up with paper towels and bags and bags of flour. I mean, I didn't mock him to his face. Just in my head, and maybe a little bit on Facebook.

Anyway. He sure showed me, huh?

What else?

My knee hurts.

I've been very good about exercising regularly. I alternate Peloton rides with runs. The other day I went for a run around City Park. The street leading there has old sidewalks made of slate or flagstone slabs, and over the years they have been pushed around by tree roots, leaving the slabs uneven. So I'm running along and listening to my music and admiring the blue sky and then suddenly I was on the ground.

I landed hard on my left knee. I ripped my brand new running tights. It hurt like a motherfucker.

I lay there for a couple of minutes as I took stock. Was anything broken? Was there structural damage or was it just a bad scrape? Could I keep going?

I kept going.

At one point I was waiting to cross the street and realized my knee felt a little sticky. I pulled up my tights and discovered that I had basically taken the top layer of skin off my kneecap and was bleeding.

Still, I kept going. I wanted to finish the run. My skin and my leggings are washable.

And bonus!! Now I have a matched set of busted up kneecaps!

A few months ago I slipped on ice and landed on my face and my right knee. My face healed quickly. My right kneecap is still a little bit tender - I must have bruised the bone pretty badly.

Do you know what a pain in the ass it is to not be able to put pressure on either of your knees?

But I'm fine. We're fine.

I ordered a trampoline for the kids - it'll arrive tomorrow.

We watch a lot of movies. We play a lot of videogames.

I ordered a bluetooth karaoke microphone, and it may be my favorite toy, ever. Josie sings Lizzo and Billie Eilish, Zeke sings Frank Sinatra, I sing the Dixie Chicks.

I bought Zeke a pumpkin pie at the grocery store this morning and encouraged him to eat it for breakfast.

For my morning coffee, I got out the Wedgwood that I inherited from my grandparents, because why the hell not?

We're going to be in this for a while, so we might as well make ourselves happy.

The play unfolds before my eyes, there stands the actor who is me

Because I do my assignments, I was determined to know the speech, off-book.

I practiced in front of Josie and Zeke, both of whom applauded me enthusiastically. They're so sweet and encouraging. It made me feel really good.

"Are you going to be in a play? Will you be famous? Can we come watch you?"

It's the famous part that they were most interested in.

I explained that it's just for practice, just for a class. Just for fun.

I wanted to have some fun.

I come from an actor-y family. My grandma Ruth was an actress and a radio DJ. Throughout my childhood, I watched my dad do community theater in Venezuela and Israel and India. I did school plays and community theater in middle and high school, and a little bit in college.

Chava in Fiddler on the Roof. Margot in Diary of Anne Frank. Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Alice, one of the romantic leads, in You Can't Take It With You.

 Let me tell you, there are few things more mortifying than being an 13-year-old 8th grader in a high school production and having to kiss a 17-year-old senior on stage.

But I did it. I kissed Trevor, who seemed ancient to me and who towered over me by well over a foot. I persevered. The show must go on.

The acting class was a 6 week series. It provided me with something that wasn't work and wasn't child-rearing and wasn't for anybody else. It was just mine. It was creative. I was in a different environment and interacting with different people.

I did the speech. I received some constructive criticism, but felt like I did it well.

And then it was over. Now getting out into the world and interacting with new people is over, for the time being.

I went into self-quarantine this past Sunday - I was skiing up in Summit County on Saturday, and it turned out they had had a cluster of positive tests. Then that night the governor ordered the ski resorts closed. Now everything is closed.

It's hard.

I'm not fully an extrovert, but I'm not fully an introvert either. I like being alone, and being around lots of people can wear me out. Big crowds can make me anxious and exhausted. But I like having it at least be an option.

My kids and I are home, and we're all getting along. We're keeping the house clean and making time to get outside, although we had a snowstorm yesterday and it's still cold and wet, so our daily games of street hockey have been put on hold. I'm exercising every day. I've discovered that deep-cleaning the house every day relaxes me.

We have plenty of food and wifi and games to play. I work for a government agency that doesn't depend upon customers or profits to keep its doors open (though our doors aren't actually open right now), so I'm not worried about money.

I am maintaining connections with people via email and text and FaceTime. My mother and I have coffee together every morning. I chatted the other day with a sorority sister whom I haven't seen or spoken with in 30 years. The Denver ZTAs are having a virtual happy hour tonight.

But I'm scared. I miss my family. I worry about them. I worry about my children. I worry about myself, and how devastating it would be for my kids if something happened to me. I mean, I'm extremely strong and healthy, but strong and healthy people have been hit by this virus and are now dead.

I'm not particularly afraid of death - once you're dead, what's the difference? But I know what it would do to my family.

It's actually not like me to worry. I'm not a worrier. My mother taught me from an early age to not worry about what you can't control. You can only deal with what's in front of you. If something bad happens, you deal with it when it happens, but worrying about a thing before it's a thing isn't helpful. My natural inclination is to stay calm. Don't freak out. Be zen.

So it suprised me when I had a major panic/anxiety attack the other day, and she was the one who was able to talk me off the ledge. She's better at this than I am.

My dad offered to drive out here, but we told him it wasn't a good idea for many reasons. Not the least of which is that he's a terrible driver.

He laughed when I said that.

We take it day by day, and play our roles. We play all the roles. In my house right now, I am mother and teacher and playmate and friend and therapist, all at the same time, all rolled into one.

We go along and try to act as if it's all normal, so that we don't go crazy.

Pretending is the only way to get through it.