A World Turned Upside Down: The Pandemic Check List

 

Brioche!

So we can all agree that this pandemic has gone on waaaaay longer than we would have preferred, right? We are tired of the masks and take-out restaurant food, and there is a real danger that Netflix may run out of content before we rise to the top of the vaccination wait list. (Not that I'm complaining, but as I have mentioned before, I have four tickets in the let's-kill-grandma lottery and am still a couple of months away from the jab, based on the priority list and the rate doses are arriving in the county.)

I have now moved from "Let's Be Smart About This" to "I AM NOT GOING TO WASTE ALL THOSE MONTHS OF HUGLESSNESS" on my scale of isolation. I no longer go into stores, even masked, and Husband is pretty much the only face I see outside of Zoom calls. (Just an aside: I've concluded hell must be an eternal Zoom meeting made up only of senior citizens. Honestly, I could not have made it through this without seeing the gorgeous faces of my friends, but trying to walk a newbie through the subtleties of the mute button is...challenging.)

The up side of all this isolation is that I am working down my pandemic check list with  surprising efficiency. I'm assuming you all have lists that you wrote out in a panic last March when everything was cancelled and the end was not even over the horizon, much less in sight? 

What were we going to do with al those empty hours stretching out inside the four walls of the house? 

I know, I know. I am so lucky that this appeared to be a problem. Parents of children who have not yet flown the list, I cannot express the depths of my admiration for you. I could not have handled this 20 years ago, when the Boys were all sulky teenagers under our roof. I could not have handled it 15 years ago when the college kids would have been sent home to suck up the WiFi and my sanity. 

But solitude does have a way of allowing one's mind to be super-productive and active in a dire, non-productive way.  What would I do to keep myself on dwelling on the constant, low-grade drumbeat of doom that was present in March of 2020? 

I made a list. 

On that list were things I've wanted to do or learn but never "had the time" for. The irony quotes are, obviously, to indicate that I know very well that we have the time for what we make the time for, and it's all about choices, and blah-blah-blah. But I hadn't done these things, okay? And I wanted to, okay? 

On my list were some items I've already bragged about here. There's the sourdough starter, for example, which was so delightful and yummy that two weeks ago it was flushed down the garbage disposal because ye gods, so much bread. Some day I will have to wear clothes again. There are the aforementioned Zoom calls which had intimidated me but which now are my primary means of communication with the outside world. 

For years I've wanted to learn to do brioche knitting. I'm a fair-to-middlin' knitter and have loved this stitch since the first time I saw its intricate patterns (on both sides!), but in spite of YouTube tutorials and even the purchase of a book, I could not figure it out. This week, thanks to a stocking-stuffer video class from Husband, I have learned to brioche. Hooray! Hats and fingerless mitts for everyone!

But perhaps the list item that delights me most right now has me setting the alarm clock for 7 a.m.: I'm taking an online Zumba class. 

I know! Me, the worst dancer in the world. Me, the person least likely to move out of the recliner. Me, the person whose lack of coordination is legendary. 

Three times a week I push back the coffee table and tune into a Silver Sneakers Zoom session led by Damaris in Miami. She is a Li'l Dumpling-shaped dynamo in Spandex, and she has all of us old people doing cha-cha and meringue and the twist, sporadically yelling "Hey!" and making heart-shapes with our hands as we pump our fists. I am so bad at it, and it is so much fun that I don't even care that I'm bad at it. By the end of the 45 minutes I am sweating profusely and have achieved a self-righteous glow that will last all day. 

So maybe that's the best thing to come of my list--I'm enjoying trying things I'm really bad at. I have enjoyed but am not bragging about my bread baking or my knitting. I knew I could do those things fairly well already. The Zumba class? That was light years out of my comfort zone, and here I am, loving it.

I'm not looking forward nearly as much to the next item on the list. Maybe adding random "Hey!" and hand hearts to attic cleaning would help? I can't wait to see if Husband agrees.