May 19th, 2020

Pandemic Diary VII: May 1 to May 11

Day 50: hoo boy. Is anyone else who is in an objectively decent situation still finding life just exhausting in lockdown? I can’t explain it and I feel guilty for being overwhelmed by my relatively few demands, but here we are. Yesterday, other than the car alarm, nothing went wrong–I did a couple exercise videos, worked, ate leftovers for lunch, talked to a friend over video, had a work meeting, worked some more, and took a nice walk. That was it, but I still made a frozen quiche for dinner and had to watch my FoLD Zoom event lying on the bed (Fractured Fairytales–it was great!) because the end of the week is just this huge struggle for me. WTF? What if I had more actual problems? I found some new tents on my walk, very cleverly set up to take advantage of existing retaining walls. Should really put my own problems into perspective but I still felt mired in everything.

About that quiche–it was pretty good, and I would recommend it if you are looking for a healthy enough, inexpensive vegetarian dinner that you can just put in the oven (Schneider’s cheese and spinach). Also when I took it out of the oven, Evan (cat) lost his damn mind–howling is if I had stolen his birthright by not giving him hot quiche. I still didn’t, and reminded him that he’s a cat and doesn’t eat processed foods, to which he responded by waiting until we were in the other room eating (in front of the tv, of course, since dinner table conversation is too much for me) and then climbing onto the hot stove to eat quiche crumbs and then, high on cheese and being yelled at, ran about the apartment like a maniac (I believe Claire Marie used to refer to this behavior as “pinball tag,” which is very apt). So one of us is not letting the pandemic keep us down, anyway.

Day 51: no one tells you that one definition of love is if there is a global health emergency you will start performing all the basic services for each other that you used to get outside the home, like haircuts. I sort of wish I knew that when I was dating but wouldn’t have really changed anything. #love #pandemichaircut #husbandsofinstagram @ Toronto, Ontario

Day 52: Alice, our younger cat, seems to be experiencing acute anxiety as a sort of pandemic proxy. Most cats are anxious, and Alice only weighs six pounds and is often bullied by her big brother, the oft-mentioned Evan, so she is already more anxious than most. But in pandemic life, all our routines are off, there are so many new schedules and new noises and it’s really freaking her out. She’s been miserable for a while now, and it finally culminated today when I was doing several unheard of things at once: watching TV a) in the middle of the afternoon, b) in the bedroom, c) a show with a catastrophic boomy soundtrack (Station 19–it’s quite bad but somehow relevant to me right now). She started out drowsing next to me on the bed and gradually started roaming around the room and progressed to frantically running around the room while trying to groom herself simultaneously. It sounds funny but to see it was so weird and pathetic (if you are running and you try to lick your back, you’ll fall down fyi) I turned off the show for a while to try to comfort her, which only worked while I was doing it–as soon as I stopped she went right back to misery. I gave her some catnip and some time alone with no noises, but I’m not really sure what will help. I feel pretty sure there’s a metaphor for us all in C-19 times in here somewhere. PS–I personally had a nice day, but mon chat, c’est moi.

(2) Tip: if you normally take sugar in your coffee but are trying to conserve sugar (or have none) because of the #bakepocolypse hot chocolate powder is just as sweet and actually nicer anyway. This is my single greatest personal insight of the past several days. You’re welcome.

Day 53: I had a fairly wan day between it being cold out and constant construction noise and worry that the cat is having a nervous breakdown. Instead of dwelling on those things, here is a list of the activities that I have found most fun and distracting during the pandemic. Please just assume I’m doing the stuff that everyone is doing–calling my friends and family, binge-watching shows, sleeping extra. This is a list of stuff others might not have thought of yet, in case it’s useful:

–digging through drawers and sorting/playing with old stuff. I’ve mentioned here before my pleasure in my old scarf collection and other things I found around the apt. Pre-pandemic, I never had time to really enjoy all my material possessions, limited though they might be–now I do!
–video cooking lessons! I got SO sick of my own cooking, and then Marie Sampson Butler offered to teach me some of her moves! It has been great to have both the supportive instruction and the new delicious meals!
–video play reading with friends–a good way to keep the conversation going after we have run out of things to say, and also to discover a new play!
–trying to be a responsible citizen. As sorry as I feel for myself, trying to right by others has made me feel a little better. Giving blood, giving money to charity, researching how best to support local businesses, even just being kind and friendly to my neighbours–it all makes me feel a bit more like a part of a real society again.
–silly games! We run a fairly grown-up household here, maybe to our detriment. During the pandemic, Mark Sampson built me a fort and hid Easter Eggs for me, we played Scrabble and Wii, and I downloaded a pointless game for my phone. –obsessing about food! One grocery shop a week, no eating restaurants, no being invited to dinner anywhere, no work cafeteria, the need to spend money judiciously but also support local businesses means I think about food ALL the TIME. Sometimes that means we have a lot of healthy, interesting meals planned and shopped for in an orderly fashioned; sometimes that means I order 1.5 kilos of cheese over the phone because I just need something to look forward to (thanks for the idea Kathryn Mockler!)
–group chats! It may seem like I share my worst thoughts here on Facebook, but I actually save those for private chats with dear friends–lucky them! It is actually invaluable to be able to say good morning to the gang and share the highs and lows of the day! I actually am very lucky, though I sometimes have to take a nap at 5:04pm.

Day 54: Friends, I went to the grocery store! One person per visit per household per week is my understanding of the rules, and Mark had already been on Saturday so we were done for the week but–I left some stuff off the list! And thought of some other stuff I felt like making! And was just generally having a miserable day and I got so mad thinking I couldn’t make the meals I wanted because I wasn’t organized enough to make the right grocery list four days ago and the store is right down the street and I just…went there and bought all my stuff. And I feel like a monster, which is why I am confessing to you–I made it nearly eight weeks and now this! OF COURSE nothing really happened and I didn’t get near anyone at the store, but that is because most people are obeying the rules–if everyone did what I did the store would be crowded and it would be dangerous. At least most people are good citizens and I am, most of the time. Oh my god, I did not know I could feel this level of despair over $30 worth of groceries.

(2) One of the strange joys of this time for me has been reading Kristyn Wong-Tam’s Covid newsletters most days. She’s smart, kind, and a strong advocate for what is important in and for our city.

Day 55: Discovered when I tried to do yoga this morning that I have hurt my right wrist somehow (in the night??) and now yoga is unpleasant. Soon my only “activities” left will be making and eating food, watching the cats, patrolling Rosedale on foot, and arguing with Mark about laundry issues.

Since nothing is funny about the present and really, I’ve always thought the point of this FB account is humour, I think I will start sharing some old funny stories here.

When I was very young and much shyer, I was working in a store where the “receiving guys” were all very bro-y and spent all day listening to talk radio and yelling at each other. No women worked in receiving but most of the sales staff was women, and when we went into their area for anything, lots of teasing/flirting ensued. I HATED that and would always just scurry away. Except once, towards the end of my tenure there, one of the cutest/broyest receivers was somehow teasing me about having a crush on him, and I managed to respond, “Sure, Devin, I’m totally in love with–I have secret tattoos of your name all over my body.” He was shocked into silence and I scurried away IN VICTORY. I was so proud–I thought it was such a good line–happy to get to repeat it here.

And I’ve always sort of wanted to write a short story about a secret tattoo, though I haven’t yet.

DEVIN!

Day 56: Today is the last day of the second month of quarantine for me. My Christmas-present concert in June got postponed indefinitely this morning and someone is putting up hateful anti-Hillary Clinton stickers in my neighbourhood again for reasons I can’t possible understand. I did save the pro-Hillary stickers Frédérique Delaprée gave me when this last happened, three years ago, and have been covering them up, but the thrill of battle is gone. I overheard the neighbours fighting last night. Even the prospect of 1.5 kilos of cheese coming tomorrow morning can’t cheer me up.

A cheerier story from the past: a person of my acquaintance (who shall remain nameless, since I didn’t ask to tell this story) when a very small child, destroyed a towel rack by swinging on it, and responded to chastisement by parents by shrieking, “You WANTED kids!!” Mark Sampson upon hearing this story, was deeply charmed, and has gone on to respond to much spousal criticism with, “Hey, you married me!”

(2)

Hello, as an update to my post below, I was out with my stickers at lunch and found one that was too high for me, even when I stood on a step and leaned (my enemy is tall) so I had to put my sticker below it, so at least passersby had all the perspectives. In the past in similar sticker combat, I have gone home and gotten a step ladder, but I felt it would be too conspicuous and weird in Covid times.

Then a bird pooped on my head. Mark wiped most of it out of my hair with a leaf (“is this how you pictured marriage???”) but i had to put my coat in the laundry the day after laundry day and will eventually take the second shower of the day, a hated thing for me (I assume in hell they make you take two showers a day so your skin gets all dry and your hair is frizzy–just me?)

I am only mildly comforted by everything being exactly on theme…

Day 57: Now in week nine, oh no. I didn’t have the strength to update yet again yesterday but I also broke a knife and Mark broke a candle holder so things are now literally falling apart. I tried Lindsay Anne Fleming‘s yoga suggestion this morning and that was really good, so one win–I’ll take it.

The funny story from the past I was going tell this morning was about the time I accidentally got caught up in an American military drill when I was lost in Buffalo, but that story is…not as funny as it was 15 years ago, given the state of America currently. And maybe even at the time, though I was too naive to realize.

Let us return to something even older (I’m trying to make all these stories pre-2006, when I got facebook) which a few people have heard before, about the time I was going to the Biodome in Montreal on the metro and the girl sitting at right angles to me threw up on me. It came out of nowhere, and after, I was so appalled, and she was continuing to vomit (now into her glove) that we didn’t say anything to each other (I was very young–I like to think I would have been kinder if it happened today) and then I ran off at the next stop in a panic.

Except I was relatively new to Montreal and didn’t know where i was. So I went into a car rental agency and asked to use their washroom to wash the vomit off my coat and…they let me? I imagine it all seemed fairly weird to them but I was righteous in my grossed-out-ness. I completely drenched my jacket to the point of unwearability and then asked for a garbage bag from the (very nice) car-rental people to put it in and, agitated and cold, went on to the Biodome, where I joined my group and toured the exhibits with a sympathetic friend who–I think–was named David, hauling my wet jacket along in its garbage bag. Such was the logic of young Rebecca that it never once occurred to me that perhaps the day wasn’t meant to be and that I should go home.

(2) Hey Toronto friends, what are you buying these days? With no where to go and no one to see, I’m much more excited about retail therapy than usual, and most of my excellent purchases lately have been from seeing someone else post, “I got this great thing!” and then I ordered it for myself (or as a gift) and it was also great! I’m far (far far) from rich, but I have a little money to spend and would like to keep it in the community–what’s local and excellent? It probably shouldn’t ALL be food…

(3) One of the upsides of time no longer having any meaning is that sometimes you wander into a park and say, hey is that a footbridge over the Don off in the distance? And there just isn’t any impediment to seeing that curiosity through! These photos are 1) park west of the bridge 2) standing on the bridge looking north 3) park east of the bridge 4) view of the footbridge itself from another (car) bridge farther south and 5) another random nice shot of Don and skyline. No I don’t know why any of this but it was a nice enough walk and at least something new! #pandemicwalk #whynot #donriver @ Don River

Day 58: I wasn’t feeling great today, which was sort of a blessing in disguise as it was an excuse to pretty much lie on the couch all day, which is what I feel like doing much of the time these days but don’t due to some sort of productivity myth…and my job. But it’s Saturday and also a blizzard, so I just sat there like a lox, largely guilt-less. Mark Sampson brought my mom her mother’s day gifts in the snow and a mask (zeugma!) and bonus, we got to have this gem of a conversation:

RR: Was the mask ok?
MS: Not at all! It was fine inside but as soon as I was out in the cold it made my glasses steam up completely.
RR: Oh no. What did you do?
MS: I kept it on, out of respect for your mom. I just walked very carefully, as though through thick fog.
RR: Yikes! Did the plastic stay on the flowers?
MS: No! It was very very windy, too, in addition to the cold and the snow, and the plastic blew off at some point, but I didn’t see, on account of the glasses fog. When I got to her place, I went to take it off like you told me, but it was already gone.

Day 59: Today was a nice day. I’m trying hard to embrace going for walks when it’s cold and gross out because it’s so much easier to distance from others appropriately–I had most of a little park in Cabbagetown just for me, which made the fact that it was spitting out and 5 degrees easier to bear. I miss my mom a lot but we had a Skype cocktail. Mark and I ate some of our (excellent) cheese from Monforte Dairy and I noticed that one of our cheese knives is missing. Mark says he doesn’t know anything about that but of the two of us, I feel pretty strongly that the person who somehow tore one of his shoes all the way down one side and is still wearing it a month later is the one more likely to have lost a cheese knife.

Day 60: Did you know that a new function of Outlook is to go through all your sent emails and find every time you said the words “I will something something something,” list all of these as “tasks” and then nag you about them???? What genius came up with this? I will be looking into writing that person an angry email!

(2) I feel like this floating eye when I walk in the city now. Absent a destination, a schedule, or usually anyone to walk with (I still sometimes walk with Mark, but often it’s just too much work to distance from others as a pair and I go on my own) I feel sort of invisible–like I couldn’t interact even if I wanted to. All I do is see. I’ve always felt I’m pretty observant but since there’s really nothing else to do now, I’ve stared so hard at everyone and everything. This peering into people’s gardens every day for a week, waiting for a certain flower to bloom is new. I’ve also gotten way judgier–it’s dumb, and my judgements aren’t even good ones, but I invent narratives about people I see and then I decide if I like their narratives or not. The social-distancing bubble feels like such a trap–yes, it’s nice to slow down and really think about whether that bud is bigger than it was yesterday, but it should really be only physical distance and yet it isn’t. I smiled at the woman who cleans my building foyer and hallways today because I have seen her most days for close to a decade, but she didn’t respond because I was wearing a mask and she didn’t see.