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Friday, March 27, 2020

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.


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