My wife Anne has started a journal, as she says one day people will be interested to know what we went through during the COVID-19 crisis and conversion to dictatorship. I thought I'd start one as well.
We're months into this yet still at the beginning, so much a already passed. I'll start with a description of myself and a typical day.
I'll try to describe what I see in th mirror after weeks of inactivity and through my rapidly declining and blurry eyesight, with a nod to Harlan Ellison. When I chance by a mirror I have not yet broken I see a large bloated mass, with pale white and almost incandescent skin. They eye in the half of my face that still works has vision, yet is still blurry. The mouth is more like a slit, into which I thrust whatever edible or inedible matter or small creatures I happen to come across. I leave a slimy trail of detritus wherever I go, especially on my shirts. The mop of hair is tangled and matted, even after I shower (once every 3-4 days). The smell is deafening, which is my my wife tries to stay on a different floor of the house.
The days are highly structured and melt one into the other.
I usually wake between 3 and 4 am. Sometimes I get back to sleep sometimes I do not, but am usually up at 6m. I have two cups of coffee while channel flipping between liberal "news" and Star Trek marathons on BBC, as well as enough Bloomberg to get our daily dose of market-swing driven endorphin rushes or depression. I watch less and less news because it is all drivel and BS.
Around 7:30 is the start of two learning and self improvement cycles: chess and music. Computer-guided video courses on chess for about 90 minutes, followed by a couple of hour of music playing, practice, and online lessons. My music sensei is Brian from activemelody.com. I've learned more from his site over the past couple of years than in the 40 years before that, good stuff.
Recently I've been intermixing Doom Eternal for the past few weeks. It's been years since I tried to play a video game (I didn't think I could due to eyesight), but if I stand very close to my 60 in screen in the music studio I can do it. I was a big Doom fan back in the day and thew new game is actually quite fund. Sure, it takes me a week to do on e level but not complaining.
All of this strenuous activity takes us up to nap time, usually between 12:309-1:30pm. Remember, I've been up since between 3:30and 6am at this point. "Nap" is a wrapper (Napper?) around about a 2 hour ritual of reading, playing chess games online, chatting, and then finally an actual nap.
Special activities follow until dinner time (usually more of the same as the morning). We rarely leave the house, but will walk down to the post office every other day on average to get our mail. We wear our masks to do so, but very few others in Edmonds do so - which makes me mad, as in "why the hell are we doing all of this?" Very occasionally we'll pick up takeout, more to support local businesses than anything.
I cook a sumptuous meal every other day or so. Anne cooks leftovers from my sumptuous meals (even the leftovers are sumptuous) on the off days.
Evening hours are a few minutes of Rachel Madow (all we can take these days), a few minutes of network evening news (repeating anything we happened to watch during the day), followed by one of a dozen series we are currently watching.
We Zoom with family members from time to time (Skype with Gary, who says Zoom in snecure and will not allow it to be installed, spelt or spoken). That's been a nice break and distraction.
We do venture out to forage for food as needed. Costco every few weks, QFC or PCC or Central Market for fresh stuff every 10 days or so.
That's about it. These are my days, Anne's are different (mainly consisting of trying to stay on a different floor of the house...smell as you'll recall).
We have it so much easier than so many because we're retired and have no kids at home. That doesn't mean we don't think of them constantly. Gentle Reader, I hope you are faring as well and hopefully better.
