It’s Monday again.  Patriots Day for those of us in Massachusetts.  It should be Marathon Monday in Boston but nope.  We have completed five weeks of our working from home lock down.  Today begins week six.

Sleeping is weird.  I’m doing more laundry than I’ve ever done before.  We’re doing the dishes more often than I’ve ever done before.  We’re still making the bed every day, though the sheets are in the wash today so it’s not made right now.  The trash is going out more often than ever.  The house hasn’t been this clean for this long since we moved in almost 10 years ago.  We haven’t gone anywhere since week one.  We do sometimes leave the house and go for a drive still, though much less often than before, but we just drive around and then go home.  We don’t stop anywhere.

We’re leaning on instacart for groceries and amazon for everything else.  We haven’t used amazon much because we’ve been insanely frugal.  Jen bought a new desk after week one, I bought window screens, she bought a new USB headset, and we’ve both bought bandannas to use for masks.  That’s it.  We haven’t bought books or movies or music or anything, I haven’t bought any guitar gear, she hasn’t bought any computer gear other than things needed directly for work.  We also haven’t been going out to eat at all, which under normal circumstances we do all the time.  We’re somehow managing to save a little money.  Unfortunately, the instacart bills are pretty high so that’s been eating into our available funds.

Last night I jokingly suggested to Jen that we do a Star Wars movie watch and run through them all.  To my shock she agreed.  Then to further my shock I asked her which movie she wanted to start with and she said to start at the beginning.  Episode One?  On purpose?  Amazing!

So how will week six go?  I’m guessing it will go fine, just like weeks one through five.  We just need to make sure the idiot in charge doesn’t ruin the progress we’ve made by letting his cult start going to Starbucks again.  Keep hanging in there.  Keep washing your hands.  Keep doing what socially awkward folks like me have always done and be socially distant.

Solidarity.

Just before 9:00AM today I checked to see if my staff had all signed in to work.  One of them hadn’t.  He lives way down South of Boston.  My first thought was, traffic must be bad today.  That was followed immediately by, you idiot.

There was also a second or two this morning as I was getting ready for the day when I thought it was Thursday again.  It’s not.  It’s Wednesday.  I double checked.

So the whole social distance thing is getting more and more normal every day, but we’re still not 100% there yet.  I seem to still have some adjusting to do.

Unrelated: That last post… I proof read it twice before publishing it.  I just read it again a few minutes ago.  There are at least a couple of dumb grammar/usage errors and one I-could-blame-it-on-auto-correct-but-I-typed-it-on-an-actual-Windows-box error.

Moron.

Tuesday morning:

Changed the litter box
Emptied the trash
Took the barrels out to the street
Brought the Poland Springs delivery inside and wiped it all off
Took the barrels in from the street
Took the instacart delivery into the house and wiped it all off and put it all away
Changed the batteries in the electric door lock because Alexa told us to
Just realized there is still an amazon delivery on the back step

Oh yeah, and I’m working too.  All but the door and amazon were before I punched in.

Jen and I share an office.  We’re both working from home and sitting in the same room together.  We both have regular meetings each day.  I have at least one and sometimes as many as four.  She has them pretty much all day long.  It’s tough for both of us to join a conference at the same time, so I created what I now call Conference Room A.

Also known as the conference call nook.  The little couch thingie is actually Bellana’s.  We bought it so she could take it to school with her but when moving day came she asked if she could leave it here.  I’ve always wanted to have a bedroom couch so I set it up.  When she moves back to school, whenever that might be, she is going to take it with her.  I’ll need to come up with a conference call nook alternative at that point.  For now, the brutally uncomfortable folding couch thingie wins.

The fact that this conference call nook exists is not evidence of stir crazy.  The fact that I wrote a post about it is.  Oh yeah.

Happy Monday.  Welcome to work from home week three.  It seems like yesterday we still had a morning commute.  Ah, the good old days.

We’re dealing with it.  We got some groceries via Instacart this morning, only to find out that instacart’s workers are going to strike today.  I guess we snuck it in under the wire?  Those folks deserve hazard pay.  Give them what ever they want.

We are all still here and we are all still healthy.  I feel like I’m having a bad allergy day today.  My eyes are itchy and watery.  No fever.  I’m still COVID-19 symptom free and I’m hoping to keep it that way.  Social distance is working in our house, even if it’s not working nationwide.  Let me clarify, nationwide the social distance thing is likely helping things.  It’s just not eliminating things, the way those of us who view the world through rose colored glasses hoped.  Dig it?

I spent most of last week having terrible, terrible nights sleep.  It got a little better late in the week and then I had a couple of good nights over the weekend.  Last night was terrible again.  Do you think I’m stressing about something?

The kids are here today but they are going to their dad’s this afternoon and staying there for the next couple of days.  They both woke up at reasonably decent times, but I am pretty sure they both went back to sleep again.  I’m curious if their respective schools are going to implement standard class schedule times to stop students from flaking like that.  It’s not a school vacation, even if it is a disaster of global pandemic proportions.

I talked to my father over the weekend.  He and my mother are doing all right.  My sister threatened them with violence if they left the house but I don’t believe he’s exactly following that plan.  He’s been sneaking out to a drive up mailbox.  I can’t get upset for that.  Hell, I drove to a mall parking lot to sing some shitty songs this weekend.

We learned two card games this week in our attempt to entertain ourselves through the quarantinishness.  Whist, which is a game my father used to play every Monday and Friday night, and Spades.  I had played Spades back in the distant past but I don’t think I ever got it.  I was terrible but I’m much better now after two games this weekend.  I get it now.  Both games are variations on the same thing.  I can’t decide which one I preferred.  Maybe Whist because Jen and I are undefeated as a team (two wins, zero losses).

I’m tired.

I’m not hungry but I want to eat junk food.

My 12:00 meeting was cancelled.

We’re on to week three with no end in site.  I wanna go on vacation.  Some place where I can bitch about the big crowds of people.  Thanks for listening to my ted talk.