Ten Things I'm Thinking About Right Now (Besides the Pandemic, the Election, What it Means to be an Ally to BIPOC, and Climate Change)

1. Normally I dress like an Eastern European potato farmer but today I am wearing a button down with lemons printed all over it and I feel like walking sunshine.

2. Freckles are so weird. Like why do some people get them and others don't? I've noticed, particularly this summer, the tops of my arms are absolutely peppered with freckles and the undersides are smooth and pale, with one or two dots. I can't help but wonder what it would look like if my whole body was as white and unmarked as my stomach, which has never seen the sun. Then I picture myself like a rotisserie chicken, stuck on a spit to become evenly browned. Though I suppose that's an ungracious way to describe a tanning bed, which already exists. 

People without freckles/overt sun damage to their skin, do you acknowledge your privilege and how it has impacted your life? *presents microphone*

3. Am I too old to (re)learn how to rollerskate? Do I have the courage and good enough health insurance?

4. Flowers. I am never NOT thinking about flowers. In a world where I am independently wealthy, I move out into the country and start a small flower farm, selling cut flowers at farmer's markets and doing small-scale floral design, documenting the whole thing on social media (naturally). Right now in particular, however, I am wondering if I can coax the newly planted clematis to cover the chain link fence in my backyard.

Grow, my precious. Wrap your spindly green arms around the links and blossom. Help me pretend I live the lifestyle that can afford more attractive fencing.

5. People who listen to music loudly without headphones are public enemy number 2 and must be stopped. (Public enemy number 1 is, obviously, people who refuse to wear masks in a global pandemic.)

6. At lunch I saw a girl across the parking lot with a really cute skirt on and I was like, I am coveting that skirt, it is so cute. And then I looked down and realized I was wearing the same skirt, so, great taste, me.

7. What song can't you get out of your head right now? For me, it's Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart". It featured in my dream last night. I was getting married to Justin Long--yes, the actor-- and I walked down the aisle lip-syncing it. So much to unpack there but that's for me and my therapist.

8. I like to window shop online (who doesn't?) and sometimes I come across things that I can't believe are for sale, like who in their right mind would spend $55 (that's on sale even!) on a dried seed pod from Anthropologie for decor?  Speaking of, will someone else look at this insanely overpriced beach umbrella and tell me you see "testes" printed all over it too?

9. I miss Freedom. This time last year, my whole family was there, maybe for the last time. I think part of me felt it as we drove away. Did I appreciate it enough? I'm glad there are so many things in life to remind me of my heart home--- hollyhocks growing by a fence, a cool foggy morning, the sound of Papa's voice...

10. Thank goodness for the weekend. I've been house and dog-sitting all week and I'm looking forward to my own bed. Also, I miss my plants. They don't need to be let out to use the bathroom at 5:30 in the morning.  But I also can't take them on walks, so...

HEY THANKS FOR READING, I LOVE YOU.

Sick Person Score: C-

Photo by Hanna Postova on Unsplash

Feeling like a lukewarm plate of garbage today. If you could get a grade for being sick, I would get a C-. Not a D or an F, because I still show up when I absolutely have to, but also not an A or B because my inner monologue while ill is the stuff of Shakespeare.

“But hark! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and Coronavirus is the sun!”

It doesn’t help that this week at work, I have been answering questions nonstop about how the epidemic will affect client travel/can they cancel/are we all going to die? 

Yes Judy, just not all from coronavirus and not all today.

Now that I think about it, maybe I contracted this chest cold from the amount of time reading/talking/writing about viruses. Or FaceTiming my sister whose entire family has been passing it around like a diseased hot potato. Little tiny particles traveled through the series of tubes that make up the internet, erupted from the screen and into my nasal passages. 

Someone alert Vice President Pence! His first order of business is to scrub the airwaves.

Can you imagine if we could transmit disease electronically? 

Wait, never mind, don’t imagine that.

But I digress. I know it wasn’t the internet, or the power of suggestion. It was my coworker. One of the things my brain likes to do is fantasize that it knows the exact moment of disease transmission. Like an episode in a medical drama, a montage of moments plays in my mind:

I walk back to the breakroom to refill my water bottle. Coworker is there, washing his
lunch dishes. I turn from the fountain at the same moment he turns, coughing.
I hold my breath as I walk through the invisible cloud of cough, but it’s too late.
Time slows. Minute water droplets, infected with the virus, hang suspended in the air. A
few enter my lungs, milliseconds before my mouth snaps shut.
That song from Platoon plays as over the next 48 hours, my immune system begins to
battle the intruder.

That’s it, that’s how it happened.

Fortunately I live alone, and have only myself to take care of. 

Can you imagine if I had a husband or children? 

“Small ones, Mommy is unwell. Play quietly to yourselves for the next eight hours til your father gets home. If you get hungry, there are fruit snacks in the cupboard above the stove. Just push a chair over to the counter to climb up. Change your own diapers, or better yet, potty train yourselves.  Not too much noise now, it hurts my head.”

So props I guess, to moms and dads and caretakers.

As for me, I will wrap myself in my fuzziest scarf, drink hot tea, and hope the power of positive thinking heals me quickly.

Just kidding, I will call my mother and complain, tweet about it, and finally write a blog post.

Stay healthy, my friends.