April 21st, 2020

Pandemic Diary IV: April 5 to 12

Day 24 was less exciting than day 23–I took a walk across the viaduct, and it was SO exciting to be somewhere I hadn’t been and see things I hadn’t seen in a while. Nevertheless, I may not do it again–the sidewalk is narrow on the bridge and my usual dodge of stepping into the bike lane isn’t always available due to actual bikes. It was more or less ok because I was alone but the people walking with someone else were either constantly walking single file or deeply obnoxious–if you go, go solo. Anyway, other than making a frittata that fell apart, that was today’s main event.

Some leftover events from other days include finally planting my seedlings yesterday and cooking something called “broccoli tots” purchased in the early days of the pandemic, when you couldn’t really get frozen veg and we took what was available. We got better stuff later so these have been hanging around taking up freezer space, so I made them yesterday and they were DREADFUL. Like a tater tot but bad–so hard to describe. Neither of us could really eat very many, and we are not a household that wastes food. But I did grab the pan and serving spoon when the 7:30 cheer went up for front-line workers. As we stood on the balcony, banging our dirty broccoli-tot pan along with the cacophony of St. James Town (some people have figured out how to deliberately set off their car alarms at 7:30; it’s very impressive), Mark said that these were the sorts of things that would get into the history books, which is such a wild thought. i never think of being IN history. I thought of that old Gary Trudeau cartoon, “journalists write the rough drafts of history.” This is now–we’re in the rough draft, friends.

If you are looking for a distraction from reality, may I recommend this gloriously bonkers New Yorker article from November 2017 (don’t ask), Fantastic Beasts and How to Rank Them by Kathryn Schultz. Nothing here that practical applies to daily life–I loved it so much

(2) Playing that game everyone likes. Ten jobs I’ve had—one is a lie:
1. English tutor
2. Library info person
3. Movie ticket taker
4. Book store sales person
5. Fast food counter staff
6. Box company admin
7. Fruit company admin
8. Chambermaid
9. Proofreader
10. Creative writing teacher

Alarmingly this is actually EVERY ongoing paid job I’ve ever had, not counting my internship and my current job. I tend to stick with things, I guess. [Edit: #3 is the lie. Also it was pointed out that I skipped my TAship job by my old TAship supervisor–and I liked that one! oops!]

Day 25, blessing counting edition. I have never quite understood mitigating a problem by thinking of a worse problem one doesn’t have–“Sure, I missed the bus, but at least I’m not actively on fire” ??? But I do get trying to mitigate problems by focusing on what I do have and not what I don’t, or what might go wrong–which I guess is just a reframing of the same thing. I have been very lucky in this troubling time and I’m really trying to soften my anxiety by dwelling on the good and not the bad.

Good things today:
–sunny
–friendly colleagues
–lunch hour book club meeting
—Mark Sampson‘s good humour about cat attempting to throw himself in the toilet
–hilarious cat
–Yoga with Adriene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAUf7aajBWE)
–mini carrots
–fixed my own IT issue
–when Mark walked in as I was watching How to Get Away with Murder last week, he asked “What’s happening?” and I said, “They’ve been arrested for murder” and he asked “Are they guilty?” and I got to say, “Not of this one” which is such a great punchline. I always like to say the punchlines!

Day 26 promises to be a glamour train because I am GIVING BLOOD, my first appointment anywhere with anyone other than a video conference in almost a month. I realize my excitement is misplaced but I don’t care–people need blood, which I am willing to provide, and I am need to LEAVE MY APARTMENT. It’s a fair trade. I am currently wearing a dress and tights, and may later put on makeup. Of course, per yesterday’s conversation, I will also be wrapping most of my face in a cotton scarf (that matches my dress) until I can get the whole mask thing under control. I have been experimenting with how good I am at breathing through fabric–not great–and it’s a fair walk to the clinic. This is going to be interesting. Interesting is fine.

Last night’s bedtime dialogue:
Mark Sampson: You’ll be fine.
RR: I don’t know.
MS: You will, you’ll see.
RR: You’re going to wake up in the night to me covering you in peanut butter just to feel alive.
MS: …well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
RR: Oh, my god.
MS: Tomorrow is another day.
RR: …
MS: I mean, technically. It’ll actually be just like this one.
RR: AHHHH!

(2) Friends, Mark and I played Scrabble at lunch instead of a) hunching at our computers and ignoring each other or b) attempting to have a conversation about the no places we’d gone and the no people we’d seen since breakfast. It was a great compromise level of interaction. Highly recommended (Mark won; he always wins).

(3)

Final chapter on my blood donation event (I assume that anyone who did not want every detail of my life would have unfriended or muted 20+ days ago): it was fine! The clinic was very organized and, though they had limited their capacity (no walk-ins) was operating at a good pace and had a number of donors. Everyone was nice. I found it tense, much like I find grocery shopping tense these days, but unlike at the grocery store you get to lie in a reclining chair and everyone is very kind and no one gets into your space without a mask and gloves. Of course, the staff bends over backwards to make it a good experience because the blood is so needed so they want us to come back and tell our friends and I’m here to tell you: GIVING BLOOD IS A GOOD EXPERIENCE. If you feel up to it, I encourage it. At the end, you get snacks and congratulations and the feeling of exhilaration of knowing you’ve done something good and also don’t have to go back for another 56 days.

On the way home, I was so happy to be out in society and someone somehow dropped a t-shirt off a high balcony and I watched it float onto Bloor Street and an old man smiled at me for my appropriate social distancing and I was thinking how much I disagree with the people are who say self-isolation is great because they never wanted to associate with most people anyway and then a hailstone hit me in the eye. I was so startled I kept looking at the sky and then the ground and then the sky again–more hailstones! I ran to the mall entrance but of course the mall was shut because pandemic. I explained this to a number of other people, but we did not have the rueful bonding conversation I normally would have had with strangers in that situation because pandemic.

Finally I ran home through a waning rainstorm in time for pizza with Mark and the 7:30 front-line cheer, which I realized is led by someone with one of those ballpark horns who kicks things off at the stroke of 7:30 and stops at exactly 7:35. When St. James Town quieted down, we could hear other neighbourhoods cheering on in the distance.

Society, man–I like it.

Day 27, everything that is wrong with the Bay’s online ordering site edition:
–every search function–by brand, by category, by product–only yields a few of the more expensive options. I eventually found what I wanted by looking at the expensive things and then looking at the “customers who looked at this eventually ordered that” options. I assume everyone ordered that second thing, since it’s half the price and not shiny.
–claims I already had an account and couldn’t create a new one but offered no clues as to what that account might be (or HOW THEY KNEW)
–the “forgot password” email never came

And yes, I had to persist with this and really hope The Bay sorts itself out and sends me my shipment of nondescript, inexpensive leggings soon. My previous wardrobe calculations did not allow for my life going in this direction.

Day 28, wow, four weeks! I honestly cannot remember how I felt five weeks ago. Was I scared going out in groups? Did I hope we’d all start self-isolating soon? Did I think C-19 (doesn’t that roll off the tongue easier than Covid-19?) would go away in a few weeks, somehow or other? I do not know–it feels like another lifetime.

I do remember how it felt four weeks ago when I finally did start self-isolating, and that my apartment was the safest little bubble and I was so happy I could just stay here and work from home and not feel pressure to leave. I guess…I somewhat still feel this way but I am also having so much trouble with the constriction. I’m trying to channel past RR and remember my good fortune in staying in but honestly I had a fight with Mark last night about how to fold sheets and later accused him of seeking vengeance by deliberately kissing me after eating peanut butter and these are not things I do when I’m at my best.

In other news, well…I’ve started a project to wash and dry my vast collection of scarves and then wear each one to decide whether I should keep it or not, so I guess, stay tuned for a lot of scarf news?? Some of my seedlings have started to come up, so they are thriving even if I am not. I may make matzoh later–Happy Passover, if you observe, by the way.

I’m glad I have been keeping this weird Facebook diary because honestly it is so hard to remember what happens from week to week. Time is weird!

(2) Here’s a story: when I was a whippersnapper, my folks always gave my brother and me baskets of candy and made a nice dinner on Easter (in addition to Passover dinner) so we wouldn’t feel left out in our pretty Christian community but we didn’t, like, talk about Easter, beyond bunnies and candy. I picked up the gist of it somewhere along the way, but I didn’t have a lot of details until grade 8, when my teacher was a very devout Christian. It is my impression (I’m not sure who told me this, but I’m pretty sure I’m right) that he’d gotten in trouble for teaching religious themes in a public school before, so the year I was in his class, in the weeks leading up to Easter, we did a very in-depth, thoughtful study of narrative study of the film version of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ, Superstar. To be clear, this was an excellent teacher, and a pretty excellent musical too, and I learned both text and subtext very thoroughly. And despite my dislike of anyone getting around a rule, I suppose there’s not exactly anything to hold a grudge over–I did have fun. But that still remains my entire education on the Easter story, and what parts are and are not in the Bible, while *pretty* clear to me, are not crystal.

Day 29. Today I walked way north into Rosedale and crossed to another side of the ravine–something I could theoretically have always done but never bothered to do because why would I? I was wandering along passing all these big gorgeous houses thinking about how it really makes sense to be rich during a pandemic and then I found–a park! A giant park, with a big open field, and no gate, and although the play structure and hockey rink (?!!) were blocked off, the rest was free and you could just go in and walk around if you wanted to, and a few people were, very carefully socially distancing.

If I’m being brutally honest, and i guess that’s where these posts are going, my first reaction was furious envy. At a time where pretty much nothing in St. James Town is usable, outdoor space-wise, this hit me really hard–I have the time and mobility to walk and get to this oasis, but who else does? This pandemic is going to make me an urban green space advocate.

As I walked through, I passed some parents playing soccer with their little kids and someone accidentally kicked the ball into the road. The tiny girl went running for it and the mom shrieked in terror that she should stop. I was nearer the ball and raised my arm to signal I’d get it for them and began to jog over–and then I realized that going near the family or touching their toy was no favour and stopped. I watched to make sure the woman caught the kid before she ran into traffic, and then ran away myself, burning with embarrassment. Remember when we could spontaneously help each other?

Umm….something brighter to end on…??? I saw a willow tree! You almost never see those on private property in Toronto or really anywhere in Toronto, I think because lots are generally too small for a willow’s roots not to wreck your plumbing or foundation, but the lots are bigger in Rosedale and there was a little willow, right on the edge of someone’s property. I’m grateful to Ariel Gordon for nudging me to think about my favourite tree, because it is definitely willows but I didn’t know that before she asked me. Anyway, I was really glad to see this little guy just coming into bud by the ravine, and I felt lucky to be out and moving and seeing trees at all–definitely something I will not take for granted again.

Day 30, slowest day. Mark grocery shopped alone as instructed and I scurried over when commanded to help carry the bags home. Otherwise, I’ve been fiddling around with the plants and reading a bit–really not an exciting day. So here are some updates on things we’ve been watching on TV through the pandemic, since that is more interesting than reality…and maybe others could use some new stuff to watch?

Brooklyn 99 re-watch (Netflix)–brilliant sitcom copshow, rewatch //ongoing since the beginning of the year. One of our most beloved shows–season 7 on Netflix April 24, just when we finish reviewing seasons 1-6

Feel Good (Netflix)–limited series about a queer Canadian standup comic living in England who is recovering drug addict and in love with a woman who won’t come out of the closet (and is pretty classist too, but that isn’t directly addressed). If that sounds like melodrama, it is, but it has a few funny moments. We watched the full series despite it not being very good because it stars Mae Martin, who is terribly charming, and her mom is Lisa Kudrow, in an amazing performance. The rest of it I could take or leave, but this is a pandemic–we do what we can.

Dear Mr. Watterson (Kanopy)–a documentary about the artist of Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson, except that guy is a recluse so it’s largely a documentary about just liking Calvin and Hobbes. Boring and self-involved–did not finish. Reminded me of the also boring and self-involved biography Searching for JD Salinger by Ian Hamilton–same problem.

Maudie (Kanopy)–a biopic about the Nova Scotia artist Maude Lewis starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke. Great, great performances, beautiful scenery, beautiful cinematography, and a meandering simple story that does not force an arc onto the artist’s life. We both really loved it. I would not have believed Hawke could play a gruff illiterate fish-pedlar but he was great. Hawkins always great. Highly recommended.

Assorted Simpsons Episodes (Disney+)–sometimes you just feel like watching the Simpsons, or people of a certain age do, I guess. Also trying to feel like we are paying for Disney+ for a reason since the one time we watched a nature documentary all the lions died at the end so I won’t be doing that again.

Big Mouth Table Read (YouTube)–various American TV shows (maybe Canadian too, I haven’t seen any??) have been doing YouTube specials for charity and we were excited for a Big Mouth one since there haven’t been new episodes for so long. Except it wasn’t a new episode–it was one we saw last fall. Still interesting to see everyone’s faces and here the cross-talk, and confirms my my deep and abiding love of Maya Rudolph, but did not finish since essentially a rewatch.

Schitt’s Creek (CBC Gem)–we’ve been watching the last season episode by episode as they land and…please don’t kill me for saying this, because I love this show, but I haven’t thought the current season has been very good!?! Everyone seemed to kind of regress, when they had been making progress as characters. Of course I will watch the finale, probably tonight, and I’m looking forward to it–but compared to last season, just not as brilliant.

How to Get Away with Murder (CTV website)–if you haven’t followed it diligently up until now, there’s no point jumping in in season 6–it’s hard to follow even if you know all the back story. Probably just not a good show at this point, but I do. not. care.

Jesus Christ Superstar (YouTube)–@Peter Saunders let me know Andrew Lloyd Weber has put some musicals onto YouTube, including this one for Easter Weekend. We watched about half last night, which was huge for Mark who hates musicals. It was weird to see a modern adaptation (set during the Occupy movement, which pretty much made sense) and I liked it but I just kept wanting it to be in the desert and full of hippies, Idk.

Unorthodox (Netflix)–a limited series recommended to me by a friend not onFB, and didn’t seem like my sort of thing–a young woman flees her Hasidic community in Brooklyn for an independent life in Europe–but it is fascinating and very well done. We’ve watched 2 of the four episodes so far–NO SPOILERS PLEASE. This and Maudie are probably my fave pandemic views so far! What are yours?

Day 31, I bought some foiled eggs when I went to pick up my prescription last week and asked Mark to hide them for me this morning so I could have an egg hunt–not normally something we’d do, but looking for any form of entertainment now. It was actually really fun! When I’d run out of steam, I asked if I’d found them all, and Mark said no but the remaining eggs were safe from cats so I could just try again later and we ate breakfast. I tried to eat at a chocolate egg with my cottage cheese and it turns out that I am now officially can’t-stomach-chocolate-at-breakfast years old. Grim shock!

Later, we moved the living room furniture around to do an YouTube workout, which is another pandemic innovation, and as we were hopping around I found a bunch more eggs. I feel like there’s a lesson in there somewhere about changing things up and seeing from a new angle to yield treasures–C-19 has certainly given me some new perspectives. I actually later tried to go to that park I found on Friday, coming at it via a different, less circuitous route, and couldn’t!! Again, something about getting the perspective right, right??

Miscellaneous updates include Mark seeing someone walking a cat today while he (Mark, not the cat) was out jogging and my household being mildly scandalized by the final episode of Schitt’s Creek. Still love that show, but a few odd (and icky??) bits to that last episode!

Tomorrow we are in month two, I don’t know what to say about that!!

(2) I have started to worry about everyone I have ever known, and the people I don’t have on social media especially (and if I do have you on social media, no pressure but it be great if you posted literally anything once in a while so I know you are ok, or ok enough to type anyway). Some of my messages, especially to people I haven’t talked to in ages, must sound very weird, but I am really just saying hiiiiii and also please be ok.