World Turned Upside Down: My New Normal

Pre- and post-mulch. 

I had several blog posts running through my head during the decade that has been March. Have you ever seen time come to a screeching halt at this rate? From dashing from day to day we suddenly have fallen into a temporal pool of bewildering quicksand* in which we are worrying about having enough toilet paper but have all the time in the world.

What even is this?

In two weeks we have gone from "you might want to wash your hands" to a mandatory stay-at-home order. So how do we react when there has been a seismic shift in well, everything?

I can only speak for myself, of course, but after about a week of flailing around and pandemic baking (scones, cinnamon rolls, two kinds of cookies) I am seeing a glimmer of settling into a routine. That is a good thing, since this is not going to be a small blip in our lives. I mean, judging by the rate at which March passed, we may have gone into the year 2507 by the time April is over. We will need a new normal.

My new normal is this: Do some stuff every day.

That's it. My whole plan. I mean, except that I am a two-time loser in the endangered category game (age, clotting issues that led to lung issues), I am the person least affected by the pandemic. I am not a health care worker--sincerely, God bless them. I am not the parent of small children now trying to keep them socially distanced and occupied. I am not the sole provider who has been laid off of a job. I am not the minimum wage retail employee who can't work from home, but still has to figure out child care. 

In spite of my how easy this should be for me, that first week when we discovered how bad this is was really crappy and I felt the oily black fog moving in around my feet. I spent a lot of time panicking, and I binge-watched all of "Tiger King."**

So now I am working on my coping methods that include prayer and exercise and writing, and I'm doing stuff that I honestly did not have time for a month ago.

This morning I pulled out an old piano book and worked on a Bach two-part invention and one of my mother's favorite songs ("Narcissus") that she would play while Much Older Sister and I danced around the living room. How long has it been since I worked to play the piano better just for the sheer joy of playing?

Husband and I spent Saturday morning spreading two pick-up loads of cedar mulch in our formerly desolate back yard. Our genius landscaping guy's crew had laid sod back there in the fall but in the shaded area around the maple tree he recommended mulch, which we hadn't anticipated we'd have time to install until at least after April 15. Guess what? Already done!

My oldest and dearest friends are working on a project that has us writing an essay every day, with the prompts working through the alphabet. We're already up to M. (Or N, if you don't take weekends off, which I do.)

I've planned a cleaning schedule that will go into effect...soon-ish? And I have a stack of t-shirts that I'll be making into my seventh t-shirt quilt. I've learned how to Zoom meet-ups with friends, and now have three of them scheduled each week. In addition to my regular exercise bike and walk routine I've added a Silver Sneakers Live Facebook session three times a week. Highly recommend.

So I'm doing stuff. It helps.

What are you doing? Is it helping you?



*Here I'd normally insert that meme that says "When I was a kid I thought that quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it is," but you've seen it, and if I were that meme's creator and obeying a stay-at-home order I'd spend all my time looking for people I could sue for copyright infringement. 
** No regrets on this front, although I was ready to break stay-at-home to drive to Oklahoma to extricate my Boy#4 from that state. But it was worth spending those hours with my jaw dropped full open just for the memes. No, I'm not going to link the memes. You can Google that yourself.