I haven’t left the house in five days.
Well, that’s not exactly true, I have physically left the house. I take the dogs for their walk in the neighborhood almost every day.
But my car hasn’t left the garage for five days. And I now work from home five days week, which is whole new level of bizarre.
My body doesn’t seem to know how to perceive this. I get an extra hour of sleep each morning, so in some ways, it feels like every night is a weekend night. Without the pressure of an early morning alarm, I stay up later. I’m reading more. But I still have a job to do.
But instead of getting up, showering, and grabbing my coffee as I whiz out the door, I throw on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. I walk out the bedroom door to the loft and turn on my work computer.
Unlike me, the pets seem to be enjoying this. No more long days for Shawnee and Logan, they even get a walk at lunchtime. Simba the cat spends most of his day curled up in my lap as I type on my laptop.
As I stare at Logan and Simba, I realize they aren’t worried. Today is just like any other day, with happiness coming from a pat on the head or a rub of the belly.
The construction in Boulder Canyon no longer matters, because I don’t drive down to Boulder anymore. Why would I drive to Boulder with its tens of thousands of people leaving behind a trail of Coronavirus germs? Much better to frequent the local B and F market with my fellow Nederlanders.
Except I’m not alone in that thought, and even the B and F has run out of toilet paper.
That’s the latest challenge. We still have four rolls of toilet paper left, but apparently it is going to take some cunning and ingenuity to find toilet paper during the next couple of weeks.
Because the entire country is hoarding toilet paper. Why, I’m not sure. I don’t see the connection between more time at home and a massive need for toilet paper.
It’s one of other strange oddities, life with Coronavirus has brought to my world.
Who knows how long this will go on? No one knows, and thus it’s hard to make plans.
One thing I know I won’t be doing anytime soon is skiing. A global pandemic brought the ski season to an abrupt end. Usually when ski season ends, I turn my sights to hiking and backpacking. But it’s hard to look forward to that when our government is saying this thing could last up to 18 months.
Each days takes on a sameness. Get up, make coffee, work on the computer, go out with the dogs. Watch news of the Coronavirus, go to bed.
It feels like the movie Groundhog Day, but this one day could be extending for months on end.
I miss hockey. I miss sports. In my family, sports has always been the tie that bonded us together. I have memories of visiting my grandmother with the blare of baseball games on the tv. Sports always provided the great distraction to let me forget my troubles for a day. But no longer.
I’ve taken to binge watching series on Amazon and Hulu. You can only take so much of listening to people telling you the world is coming to an end and we’re all going to die. My latest binge is watching the series from the early 2000s, Six Feet Under.
Weird, how watching a show about the mortuary business seems oddly comforting at a time like this. I like the dark humor.
I know we’ll get through this. Brighter days are ahead. I’m just not sure how far in the distance that light at the end of the tunnel really is.
This too shall pass. This too shall pass.
