My first post of 2020 comes in the midst of a global pandemic, a plague of near farcical proportions, a plot Hollywood would reject as being too farfetched. It may seem like writing is a last priority, something to do only when public health mandates shut down the gigs, the travel, the dinner parties. When the cabin fever has crescendoed to a peak (though it may be insensitive to joke about fevers and peaks these days) and you can't bear the thought of putting together a jigsaw puzzle or pulling out an adult coloring book. Anything but that. Ergo, blogging.
The truth couldn't be more opposite. If anything, words carry so much power for me that I can't bring myself to put anything out there unless I have something compelling to share. There is so much drivel on the Internet these days; why add, however negligibly, to the deluge?
I realize that this coming from someone who as a teenager prided herself on adoxography -- elegant writing about a base or trivial subject -- is laughable. After all, I've been known to wax ecstatic about my manic caffeine/alcohol mood swings at least half a dozen times in this compost pile of a chronicle. Trivia is kind of my thing. Therefore, instead of hiding my true persona behind a wall of silence, I'm gonna Sheryl Sandberg Lean In to it, so today I bring you (perhaps the first of many, many installments, since this curve is nowhere close to flattening) Quaran-Scenes, pt. 1.
1. A rousing game of Bananagrams quickly devolved into us using every tile in the game to craft a German word that describes the feeling one gets, under quarantine, of hopelessness and yet camaraderie in knowing that we're all united in our isolation and subsequent destitution.
2. When in doubt, bake some bread and drink some wine. Carbo-load for all those home fitness videos you're no doubt blazing through. Also, liquor stores remain essential businesses because we all know the second they shut down, The Purge is upon us.
3. Been putting these babies to good use lately. As much as it sucks not being able to work, finally having some time to crack open these bad boys has been a welcome diversion from the existential crisis looming just beyond the threshold of the to-do list.
4. Here we have a rare glimpse of the Task-Oriented Boyfriend in captivity. Like others in his species, this type of Boyfriend does not do well in idle times, requiring many projects to keep himself from going crazy. He does not share my aversion to puzzles of the jigsaw variety, and here we see him toiling over a 1000 piece largely monochromatic monstrosity which he has inexplicably chosen to put together with zero help from the picture on the box. When asked why he would do such a thing and whether such a choice makes him a certifiable psychopath, he shrugs and says, "Yeah, it makes it more difficult."
