Plague Diaries: Isolation Day 6

Yes, theoretically I have more time to blog now. Practically, I look at my computer with a grimace of distaste and think "what's the point?"

I am trying to overcome this feeling of overwhelming malaise. I am immensely comforted by the fact that we're all going through this together. I've commented on a couple of blogs, agreeing that it would be worse if this was a Terrible Thing that had happened to just one of us, or just one of our children, taking them out of college, derailing their hard-won successes, throwing everything into uncertainty, and then watching the world move on without us/them. That happens, and it must be such a lonely feeling. This is not that.

Eve has said that she's fine if she doesn't go back to school until next year, or even has to take an extra year of high school. "You always said we should still have grade thirteen", she observed, which is true. She is still working on a baffling English project - it's on the Life of Pi, and she had to draw a pie on a giant piece of paper and then fill in each wedge AND the rest of the paper with tiny writing on a variety of themes in the book. I keep wondering if this teacher has super-human vision, because even if she DIDN'T have to try to read it on the photograph that she's now going to be getting it makes my head ache thinking about trying to read that miniscule script. Not surprisingly, Eve is finding it difficult not to procrastinate - she takes frequent dance breaks in my room between wedges of pie.

We are all in self-isolation since Angus came home from New York Tuesday night (five and a half days and counting). Angus hasn't left the house at all. Eve, Matt and I have been out to walk Lucy and have not been within many metres of another person. It's both a little creepy and comforting to know that every day we do this is another day flattening the curve and protecting someone we might have infected (although no one is showing any symptoms, so maybe not on the second). We try to make sure we have a Family Time every day, because we are a family of introverts all processing the current weirdness and our house is spacious enough that we can all hermit excessively if we're not careful. We watched the second of the new Jumanji movies a couple of days ago which was hilarious (The Rock and Awkwafina doing Danny DeVito. Kevin Hart doing Danny Glover. People switching their avatars halfway through - y'all, there were some acting chops on display here). Matt got Eve to watch Escape from Witch Mountain on Disney Plus with him yesterday - oh my god I loved that movie and oh my god it does not hold up remotely. And as Eve said "you can just tell they thought they were KILLING IT."

We did a virtual pub night via GoToMeeting with seven friends. Even with the technical glitches it was pretty awesome. One friend drank four glasses of wine then passed out on the couch beside her husband still in view of the webcam. Some people couldn't stop moving and some people were so eerily still you'd keep thinking they'd frozen. We tried to take pictures of people toasting at the sides of their frames, but then realized that we were all in different screen positions on each other's computers and it was extremely difficult. One friend had to switch to her phone when her husband went to bed in the room with the computer, and on the phone you can only see whoever is talking instead of seeing everyone, and she was also kind of drunk, so she looked baffled and terrified, as if she was in one of those horror movies where everyone is in a group video chat and someone suddenly gets murdered.

Matt spent two days clearing out Angus's bedroom in the basement which was originally a spare room/office before he moved down there. Just as he had set up a good workspace for himself, Angus decided to come home. He has now done basically the same thing in Angus's old bedroom upstairs. I can't find the tweet now, but I saw one that said "You knew women working from home are on the couch with a MacBook Air and a cup of tea and men have a three-monitor set-up and the loudest keyboard they could find at Best Buy". I showed it to Matt. "I only have two monitors" was his defense. It's fine. I've decided when we can go out again I will do all the grocery shopping and anything else because he has to work and we can better afford for me to be sick. And since it's Angus's old bedroom there's a bed in his office if I need to be quarantined (there used to be both a loft bed and a single underneath, which prompted Eve to say "man, Angus has a lot of beds that he never sleeps in).

Okay, turns out I'm just as good at blathering about nothing as I ever was. Whew. Stay safe, friends. Stay away from other people if you can. Go for a walk unless, like here, it's FUCKING SNOWING. Way to add insult to injury, Mother Nature.