Under All the Tarnish, There’s a Silver Lining

So they tell me. I think “they” are just trying to sell silver polish.

Personally, I’m at that age where I let the “good” silver skip a generation and go straight to my daughter. If this is meant to be a list of all the things we’re grateful for, in the time of Coronavirus, let “stainless steel,” air conditioning, strong coffee, and electric power top the list. It would be an obvious cliché to tell the truth, to admit that what tops the list is more time with my husband.

But I am damned glad, too, that the hoarders only went after the toilet paper and cleaning supplies. I’d have had to hurt someone, if they’d stockpiled my coffee.

I’ve been tagged and bagged by Charles Roast:

All This Togetherness, All of a Sudden!

It took me a few minutes of lockdown to realize why people kept saying, “Domestic violence and child abuse will go on the rise, soon.” It’s a darned good thing my husband of nearly thirty-six years and I like each other, in addition to still loving each other.

Lockdown and retirement came simultaneously for me. One “silver lining,” if you can call it that, is the realization that even for introverts, solitude sucks when it’s not by choice, and I’m grateful for being “stuck at home” with my husband, lover, and best friend all rolled into one, in the midst of all this “social distancing.”

While I have been whiling away the hours in self-indulgent navel gazing, he has been doing home renovations and gardening and making me feel like a complete slacker. I’m doing my part: I’ve chained the ladder to the garage wall and have been practicing my icy Death Stare™ every time he says the word, “roof” like he’s actually thinking about it.

Meanwhile, I am sort of half-assedly working on a birdbath-table-top-garden-thingy I’m calling an “art project,” but is probably just a way to avoid being drafted into replacing all the doorknobs in the house.

I imagine our kids, five hours away, are stressed by the pandemic and all the impromptu restrictions and changes in their normal routines, but grateful that their parents have no choice but to accept that they are now adults and fully capable of taking care of themselves, and of making good decisions. Don’t tell them we already knew this. Tell them, instead, to call their mother.

Bread & Circuses: Yum!

I should be writing. But right now, the distractions are delightful. I feel almost guilty for how un-stressed I’m feeling, lately. I have been enjoying the extraordinary creativity of ordinary people emanating from around the world — from Italians singing to one another from their balconies to people howling to one another in the darkness. From coronavirus parody songs on YouTube, like these, from The Holderness Family:

to Stories on Medium, and a whole group of writers I (somewhat) reluctantly joined, while grumbling, “I don’t need no steenkin’ writer’s groups…”

I am sad to think that the celebrities who’ve been working so hard to entertain us from their own homes, sans lighting professionals, sound studios, live audiences, and make-up artists, will eventually go back to the glitz and glamour of a Hollywood or NYC studio, and then that “we’re all in this together” message, along with the intimacy of them looking just as disheveled, bewildered, and shell-shocked as we all feel right now will be lost, once more, to artifice. But for now, I’m enjoying their more real and down-to-earth performances, which I find no less funny and inspired (or inspiring) for being low-budget and low-tech. A couple of my favorites:

My husband informs me that we have Starz on free preview, so if that means I can start binge-watching the latest season of Outlander, tonight. Normally, I’d go hang out with my friend Sherri, and binge-watch a few week’s worth with a fellow fan over wine and pizza, but this will do for the moment.

Think, think, think.

There’s Still Work to Be Done

It is, in a way, a silver lining to think that the Universe has given me a time-out, and confronted me with a choice:

“Clean house or sit your butt down and write.” It has even provided material. “If you don’t feel like writing about the biggest historical event of your lifetime, then you clean house or pick something else, but don’t whine you’ve got nothing to write about, or I’ll give you something else to write about!”

I’m good, thanks. Reminds me of how my mom used to get whenever I made the mistake of complaining, within earshot, that I was “bored.”

Never ask, “How could this be any worse?” and never, ever let the Universe think you’re bored.

Now, Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free — I tag Amy Marley, an “aspiring writer of children’s books and memoir”: