Day...Whatever

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? 
~Mary Oliver, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

It's been a minute (or maybe fifty, who knows). I haven't been too stir crazy on the weekdays, there is still work, enough to be done to keep the day busy. There are phone calls and video calls and all sorts of things that give the day a purpose. But the weekend felt a bit claustrophobic, especially because the weather was gloomy with gale-like winds. But even as I whine, I still know and count all my agnostic blessings regularly. There are a lot of them.

One interesting thing I am learning about myself is that the structures which are harder for me to put in place during regular days are easier now. Not because any of it is fun but because I know that it's a slippery slope when you let that first sink-full of dishes pile up. So I've been diligent about trash and wiping things down and running the vacuum cleaner. It's not productive per se, but it's movement and action. 

In the Great Hoard of 2020, the one thing I did not stock up on are quarter rolls. This is no small thing. If the only way you can do laundry is by painstakingly inserting quarters into an unpredictable machine, you do not want to find yourself without quarters. Or close to having none. Of course, as with all things that went scarce in the Great Hoard of 2020, so did quarters. They are now being rationed. I have general anxiety about a bunch of things but I have not stopped talking about quarters for a while now. I finally have three rolls now, yay local Mariano's, but I don't think I will ever be able to stop hoarding them. Or worrying about them. I do A LOT of laundry, and I think it's partly because it's the thing that feels most in control. Things are falling apart but I have clean linen. The world has been acting a fool about toilet paper and I would just like a realistic prediction about when they will be back on the shelves. And no, September of this year is not an acceptable answer. There will be books upon books upon case studies upon interview questions about the Great American TP Shortage of 2020. History is being written, and the villains are revealing themselves (people who bought 17000 sanitizer bottles, video game companies that tried to declare themselves essential services, organizations preparing to absorb the stimulus checks their employees receive). We see you.

While my anxiety tends to lead me towards hoarding, I am trying not to do that. I am getting multiples of things because 1. going out regularly is the opposite of social distancing and 2. as long as I know I will consume it, give or take a few weeks, it's fine. At this point no one can tell us with confidence when the shelter-in-place order will be lifted, and more so, when will life as normal resume. We simply don't know. The peak hasn't hit the United States or Illinois just yet, and when it does I am guessing today will seem like an incredibly normal day. What I had not been hoarding, but just buying like I always do were puzzles and it looks like I am sitting on some prized items now. The prices have gone from ten dollars on average to thirty or forty. Which is...absurd. The world is not out of puzzles surely but there is price gouging happening for sure. A lot of this is artificial scarcity but it's a little hard to not get swept in when there is no foreseeable end. The Spanish flu apparently peaked thrice. 

I am now going to go and make myself a strong cup of tea, and think about what a remote interactive dashboard to make wfh a little more connected could look like.