Here's what Coronavirus Quarantine has made me realize about myself. I romanticize.
That's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. That I do. That I never really realized I do. Until now.
And I'm lucky enough, up until about right fucking now, to have not realized I do it because my romanticized version of things is pretty damn close to what actually ends up occurring.
For example.
In my head, here's how I envision what it's like when the kids are here.
And here's what ends up happening.
Honest to god, in an ironic twist, reality always kicks ass over romanticizonality (I really, really tried to make a noun out of "romanticized" so I could have the parallel speech structure with the word "reality" and it just didn't work out, so please accept my apologies).
To recap, life is, in fact, better than I imagine.
And then came The Quarantine. With much deference and respect to the fact that the quarantine arose from something extremely serious, I am a glass-half-full kind of girl. I was going to try my hardest to find the upside of a deadly pathogen forcing us into isolation. I know that I annoy people with this proclivity towards optimism. I can't help it. The sunshine still makes me happy when skies are gray. (you are going to really hate me when you start singing in a minute or two)
So. My rosy vision of quarantine started to form. Ideas and images raced through my mind.
There we would be, me and Dave, lovingly seasoning the veggies together, in matching aprons! (we do not even own matching aprons so I'm not sure where that came from but again, this was all in my head)
We would watch the Giants home opener on tv, trying to figure out the pitching rotation for this season. For unknown reasons but not because he had coronavirus, Jon Miller would be off "on assignment" for the ENTIRE season, and we would while away the hours listening to the dulcet tones of Kruk and Kuip, with Javi Lopez occasionally subbing in.
But my romantic notions were just not working out like they usually do. This time, reality was losing. Big time.
Being forced to stay in your house, as opposed to choosing to be there, is a very different circumstance. There's just nothing romantic about it. For some inexplicable reason, even though we have everything we need (including toilet paper), even though we have everything (mostly) we usually have, life inside the house feels claustrophobic and unsettled.
Seasoning the vegetables together in matching aprons would be fantastic if we had vegetables (or matching aprons which, and I cannot stress this enough, we do not). We are trying, for safety reasons, not to go to the market often, so our veggie drawer is on the sparse side because we eat what we buy fairly quickly since they are best consumed fresh. And the vegetables that lasts for freakin' ever, carrots and potatoes-- the supermarket has NONE! There's been a run on carrots and potatoes! I did not see that happening.
Baseball season (and every other sport) has been cancelled. Instead we are watching "Classic Giants Games" on the CSNBayArea channel. The thing is, if CSN has dubbed it a "classic game", you know it's going to be a really good game, but you also know the Giants are going to win. So great baseball. But no suspense. Takes a little bit of the fun out of it. Since you know they're going to win, however, you can simply turn off games called by Jon Miller. Silver lining.
I had imagined us on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn, snuggled together watching something great on Netflix. Popcorn--check. Snuggled together--we are here together nonstop, 24/7, so let's just gracefully let go of the whole snuggle thing for now. Netflix--check... oh wait a minute... it's buffering... oh ok now it's starti... no bufferin... wait starting... You get the idea. Everyone is home and bored and kids have no homework, and apparently our infrastructure is not quite ready for 350 million people Netflix and chilling.
So it's not turning out to be romantic. We can, however, still aspire to make it memorable, to make the best of it. (I DO know that my optimism is annoying--I already copped to that! I'm going to start trying harder to have a shitty attitude about all of this but it's going to take me some time to ramp up so be patient).
We still have each other!
Through the magic of wi-fi (or whatever makes it work), we can Zoom a cocktail hour. We can see each other. We can tell stories and interrupt each other and laugh together. We can celebrate milestones, albeit virtually. We can find ways to connect in this time of separation.
And it truly is so much more amazing than I could ever have imagined!
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