Quarantine Life: In the beginning...

I've been feeling like I need to keep a record of this time in my life, so I don't forget later.

Odd that to do this I had to have a long thought about platforms. Twitter is too disjointed. Tumblr too visual. Facebook, too... Facebook.

So here I am, back on a platform I'm not sure anyone uses anymore, but why not? This is more for me than anything else.

A History...

When I think about the start of the pandemic, I think, why did I make the choices I made? But the answer of course is that it never occurred to me that life as we knew it was about to change.

I work from home, and have for years. Occasionally I travel to client sites, maybe 2 or 3 times a year, but otherwise I have my home office set up in a corner of our living room. My husband works as a developer for a tech consulting company, and has been on assignment with a client in Jacksonville Florida since right after our wedding at the end of May last year. He drives down on Sundays, and back on Thursdays, and I miss him when he's gone but we've got our routine down now. We live in a one bedroom condo in a walkable part of Atlanta, with an open concept living room/kitchen, the bedroom, and the bathroom I've been dreaming of renovating since we bought the place almost 3 years ago.

Dreaming and saving, because that's what I do. Last fall, I decided we'd saved enough, and I started shopping around, getting quotes from contractors and then the vanity I wanted was on Black Friday sales, so then we had a vanity in our living room so this was happening. It took through Christmas to settle on vendors - one contractor, one plumber, one electrician, because we had to meet the rules of our condo for those areas. Then I changed my mind on the contractor so that took some time but by early February we had a plan, a three-week hole in my travel schedule that would accommodate the work being done, and a new bathroom's worth of parts and furniture sitting in the living room.

It's not that I wasn't paying attention to the news. Believe me, I pay TOO much attention to the news. I knew about the lockdown in China; I knew there was a man in Seattle that had it. I knew about the outbreak at the South Korean church, that Iranian parliament members were infected, that cases were growing exponentially in Italy.

On March 9, we tore out the one and only bathroom in our home.

Quarantine Life: March

March 9 - 15:

We knew it was going to be rough without the bathroom, but we had a plan. There are toilets downstairs on the first floor, near our building's fitness room. With R gone during the week, I had arranged to go to a friend's house on occasion for a shower.

There was a parade of people in the condo that week - our two contractors, who are brothers; the plumbers - a father, daughter, and I think the daughter's husband but they were never clear on that; and the electrician. Okay, that's a small parade by parade-scales, but by "just me and the cat" standards, it's a lot of people.

On Thursday, the social distancing recommendations started. R came home that day, as usual. On Friday, I went to play tennis because it was a beautiful day. It was a great workout! That was the last time I was around more than ten people. Afterwards, I went to my friend's house for a second shower of the week. This time, I took my own shampoo and towel, and I tried not to touch anything I didn't have to. That was the last time I went into someone else's house. R's work tells him to work from home.

Over the weekend, we learned the dance of washing our hands, washing our hands, washing our hands. To go to the bathroom, out the door, then elbow the down button on the elevator, elbow the floor. Elbow the bathroom door handle and try not to think how many people have touched it. Wash your hands. Use the towel to open the door, turn off the lights. Sigh and wonder why they put the trash can on the other side of the room; you shoot, you score, towel thrown away. Back to the elevator and more elbowing. Opening your door and washing your hands again. By Sunday, I was searching through our boxes of bathroom stuff for hand lotion.

March 16 - 22:

Bathroom renovation continues apace. I work in the bedroom with the cat, because left to her own devices she dug a hole in the carpet trying to get out. R works downstairs like he usually does when he works from home, commandeering the small boardroom in our common areas that no one ever uses. I try to go for a short walk most days after work, avoiding the few people on the sidewalks as much as I can.

We bath in the kitchen sink. I haven't washed my hair that way since I was a child. I still don't like getting water in my eyes.

I go to the grocery store, which sounds odd but you have to understand that I don't do this often. I use a meal service through the week when R is gone, and we eat out on the weekends. I buy frozen foods; I look at the produce and wonder if it's safe. There are no cleaning products, no toilet paper - panicked shoppers last week have cleaned them out. I'm not super worried though - you don't need tp when you don't have a toilet.

We ask the contractors if we can get our new toilet installed for the weekend, and they say yes. They work late on Friday to get it done, but I don't make it that long - on Wednesday, after the grocery store trip, I can't handle it any more and we get a hotel for Thursday and Friday. R takes the Clorox wipes and disinfects the room. I bring Chinese takeout on my way down, and I take a long hot shower Thursday night and another one Friday morning as I walk the two blocks home.

We stay Friday too, more showers, but I can't enjoy it. I feel like we aren't social distancing, like we are breaking the rules, even though we are doing the best we can with the situation. It's a relief to go home Saturday morning, to our new toilet and another week of sink showers.

March 23 - 29:
The home stretch! The plumbers come back to put in the shower fixtures. We have to beg the electrician to come back - they want to know if the work is essential and then make me get permission from our HOA board to let them in the building. The plumbers come out again, and we're nearly there - missing one part that has to be ordered from Amazon.

On Tuesday, I run up to Home Depot to pick up an online order for our missing shower door handles, and they're controlling the number of people going into the store at once. But they aren't controlling the line outside, and people are failing to maintain the six-feet distance and I'm not happy but the line moves fast. R has been saying he would go grocery shopping in the morning but I'm out and contaminated, so I text him for a list and I go to the Publix. People are wearing masks and there's still no TP or cleaning products. I buy frozen foods and cookies and a box of wine, and by the time I get home, I'm so freaked out that I'm shaking. We start disinfecting our groceries.

I stop going for walks.

Quarantine Life: Settling in

The plumbers came back one last time on the 30th, and now we have a finished bathroom. Yay!

R & I settle in to our work routine, me in the living room, him in the bedroom. I deliver the training program I've been working on for six months.

We have Zoom dinner parties with friends. We have Zoom work events. We get Shipt deliveries from Target and Publix. My meal service is still running. We get takeout delivered on the weekends. I order us masks from three different sources. None of them have arrived.

I feel like a slug, and so I go for a walk around our parking deck. There's a couple and their toddler walking around and so I don't feel comfortable.

Our neighbors start playing music in the evenings, and I clean off our balcony so we can join them. I love it. R doesn't, but he humors me.

I worry. About the news, about my family, about what the government isn't doing, about anti-elitism putting the idiots in charge, about the economy tanking, about losing my job or R's or both, about getting enough exercise, about R's health, about everything, about dying.