Stop looking at me like that! I have no idea, OK?!
That’s me, to me, in the mirror every morning, desperate to know when this day-upon-day-upon-day of quarantine will end. The man in the mirror doesn’t know, and neither do I. And we both need haircuts.
At the very least, I thought I’d escape having to go to the dentist in 2020, but no such luck. I’ve got a cleaning appointment tomorrow, and they called today to make sure I was not dead from Covid. They asked me to take my temperature before I show up tomorrow, and they’ll take it again when I get there. In lieu of readily available on-demand Covid testing, we’re forced to rely on secondary measures like temperature taking. It’s as if modern medicine has thrown in the towel and now susses out the deadliest disease of our lifetimes with a hand to the forehead. “You don’t feel hot, honey. You’re fine.”
I’m a whiner, but I’ve got it easy. I already worked from home before the pandemic, so my commute didn’t change. I enjoy spending long stretches of time alone, so I’m not going through social withdrawal. I’m healthy, I’ve got a great house and yard, and I never go hungry — not even close. My biggest problem is getting to the Pirate’s Booty before my wife finishes it. (Pirate Brands, I am available for endorsements.)
What do I look forward to every day? There’s the John in the Morning show on KEXP, of course, which connects me with the music I love, and eases my sense of isolation. And there’s the walk around the neighborhood, or the occasional long hike at the park. Out in the world, your radar has to be constantly scanning for human-shaped threats. Is that a couple walking toward me from the next block?! Shields up! Take evasive maneuvers!
I do enjoy my daily sax practice time, too. If it’s cool enough outside, I open the windows in my upstairs music room and regale the neighbors with my harmonic minor scales and arpeggios. And then I play the same song over and over and over for an hour, trying to memorize it. We musicians (and our neighbors) do suffer for our art.
In the evenings, Susan and I have become expert spelunkers of the deepest recesses of Netflix and Amazon Prime.
A French comedy series about film agents? Sure! Are there 12 seasons available?
A documentary about marionettes in 60s TV shows? I can’t get enough about wooden-headed dolls! I’m in!
Is it too soon to watch The Secret of Roan Inish again?
To end the evening, if I’m lucky, the Tweedys will be doing an Instagram Live, and I can wind down the endless day with an hour of songs I’ve never heard before, performed by one or more incredibly talented and sensitive Tweedys. The best part about the Tweedys’ Instagram Live, though, is whatever Susie has to say, about anything, whether she’s tweaking Jeff over his scraggly quarantine beard or showing off her vintage logo faceplate artwork on the wall.
I stay up too late after that, most nights, flipping through channels and eating junk food. I tell myself that I just don’t want to face having to do all this again tomorrow, but what exactly is so difficult about my life in quarantine, anyway?
I think it’s the fact that our normal lives got tossed out the window, and the things I never worried about before are now front and center. I didn’t used to worry that my children would get sick and die, but maybe I should have all along. I’d always assumed that it was safe to be around other people, but maybe I should have been more wary from the start. I used to reassure myself that so many of my fears and anxieties were extremely unlikely to happen, and it was best to put them out of my mind. Now some of those crazy unlikely things have happened, and they continue to happen, every day.
What comes next? Well, tomorrow, it's the dentist.
