Quarantine Meme
1. Are you an essential worker?
No, but I am working from home. I have about 50-60 hours worth of work a week still, which seems so insane given I barely feel like a teacher anymore. I'm in a strange facilitation role, where I wonder if I'm meeting the needs of my AP students, no less the Dual Credit and GT (especially in GT/DC, too). The kids are often so confused. I spent last time in a dark cloud for half the day after accidentally stumbling on a kid complaining loudly (but refusing to let myself do work, because I'm trying to make myself not work on weekend days).
2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started?
Half a bottle of wine last Thursday with half a pizza. The wine went fine, and I didn't even get a slight hangover, but the pizza pretty much led to my body hating me violently and locking me in a bathroom for half an hour. I knew it would happen, but it was still worth it. More on topic, though, I have something like 40-50+ bottles of wine and hard alcohol in my house, but I rarely ever let myself drink along due to the prevalence of addiction in my family.
3. If you have kids... are they driving you nuts?
No kids, which I'm kind of glad for, honestly.
4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?
Nothing. I'm reading a lot. Watching a lot of random TVs. Wait, does suddenly deciding to rewatch all of Star Trek: The Next Generation, because Laura is a cruel, cruel person, count? (Tasha died again last night. WAUGH. MY FOREVER TEARS.) Still taking care of the plants. Still taking care of the cat. Sometimes taking care of myself.
5. How many grocery runs have you done?
Maybe two, three, at most in the last four and a half weeks. None in the previous two and a half weeks. But my parents go every weekend still, and they bring me a few things every week. While it worries me a lot they are going, and I tell them so, I think that it makes them feel like somehow they are helping me since they can't see me every week anymore in persona and we can't touch, etc.
6. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?
My birthday, which I'm bummed about, and try not to think about often.
I finally, for the first time in 3-4 years, found a new tea house in town that will host birthdays (with fantastic china, and four types of High Tea) for free. I was over the moon about it a month ago, and now I won't get to have it. And it is a brand new business, of less than a month old when we went, I don't know that it will even survive being closed very long. So that party is out on the 2nd, and it might be down to no location at all for the future again.
As well, I always take my birthday day off. Drive somewhere, see something awesome, buy myself a London Fog, a bouquet of flowers, tea, and chocolate. Generally spoil me for one day, while prepping my Tarot/Astrology stuff for the next year. I was semi-planning making a day trip to Lost Maples, but now that's going to be out entirely, too. And it doesn't make sense even to keep my day off if I'll just be in my house and they won't be paying a sub anyway.
7. Are you keeping your housework done?
I set aside the cleaning tasks for Saturday morning. Dishes, trash, cat box, with things like dusting, toilet cleaning, and sheets washing set to a specific weekend each to repeat every month. It's mostly going okay when I'm not at the plague-news fugue level. I do create two times more dishes being home, though, which is sort of annoying.
8. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?
Not a ton. But, let's see. Stargirl. Aladdin (live-action). Penelope. Sherlock Holmes.
9. What are you streaming with?
Disney+. Netflix. Hulu. AppleTv. Prime, with HBO & CBS All-Access, rolled into it. If we're counting other media, too. I live to stream Spotify Music pretty much as often as I can remember to do so.
10. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?
I've touched precisely one person, by accident, for less than five seconds, during the past 30+ days. So. No.
12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?
Not eating. It's always such a struggle for me to remember eating correctly, on a schedule without like leaving-for-school, or lunch-period-is-now. I'm here in the same walls, and the same floors, and ceiling and lights, etc. Nothing changes, and it's easy just to tell myself "I'll do it in five minutes," and those five minutes become five hours, and I never notice because I just don't get hungry.
13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?
Probably. But then between being an extroverted-introvert, who is ADHD, OCD, Bipolar with bouts of Depression and Anxiety that's sort of a normal state I've gotten used to listening to the thoughts of without paying much attention to them. That part is easy. The malaise where I barely want to think, and only want to sleep, can't muster energy even for a book or a show or any writing, is the harder more invasive, harder to fight, one for me.
14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?
Thank God No. I would have problems without the ability to arts, music, tv, library books.
15. What month do you predict this all ends?
No clue. My state is the least proactive out there, which is terrifying at all times, and that is an even epically lower bar than the fact my whole country is making dumb decisions. This means it could last a very, very long time.
16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?
Hug my mom, every person in my family, and every friend near me. Be excited to teach in my rooms, to my kids' faces, and to get to go back to having social lunches with my coworkers, especially the Mav Cafe Thursday bunch. Walkthrough a hundred book stores, or at least all the ones near me. Revisit all the parks around me. Go back to seeing a movie every week on my Alamo Drafthouse pass.
17. Where do you wish you were right now?
As much as I love every answer I put on 16, this answer is always the same. My brain started with "just write "same as the last---" and absolutely jump cuts it to straight silence with the baseline, unconcerned, unguilty, ever true answer to this question-- "Wherever Laura is."
18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?
Take all of 16's answers, and add. All of Electric Traditions rituals per Sabbath. My 5K runs that had been scheduled for each of the quarters of the year. Weightlifting at the gym. Wine Class. Geek Girl Brunches at new restaurants. Monthly Movie Nights at my place. Book Club Meetings at the Thai restaurant. Dreambook Buddy Meetings in person.
19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?
No, I have five hundred (or like 15) bottles of hand sanitizer in my classroom (as it's one of 13 activities for the first two weeks, Treasure Hunt, for my kids), so I brought a lot of them home and donated them out in my neighborhood. Same with tissues and Clorox wipes. I haven't run out fo toilet paper yet, though I am almost to the end of my "Who Gives A Crap" box, which is such bad timing. But I have toilet paper from 3-4 weeks ago still in storage, and I'm on their waiting list for emailing when they have stock again.
20. Do you have enough food to last a month?
Yeah, probably, if I broke it down. I have any number of things in my freezer and my pantry. Plus, Imperfect Foods ships me a medium-sized box of fresh vegetables/2-3 meat & fish every two weeks for $18 (set up in case we get even more to the point of not leaving, and I can frequent the Fruit & Vegetable store in town). Plus, I have a monthly subscription to a healthy snack box, and ice cream, and more tea & sparkling water than anyone needs. So, yeah. I'm probably pretty set all things considered.
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