Where the day goes

              7:20am: I woke up grinding my teeth and sweaty from strange dreams and the cat on my chest.

              8:00am: My phone alarm thankfully reminds me it’s Garbage Day. I drag out one can, half-full. Decreased consumerism.

              8:30am: My son, Zach, asks if he can borrow one of my books. He holds up Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. I say, “Dude, knock yourself out!” I look for “Atlas Shrugged”, which I thought he might like better, but can’t find it.

              9:15am: Get a text from my friend Mandy, “Talkies?” I grab my coffee and a blanket and sit in my car so we can chat/vent. I find it funny that the only privacy I get now is when I leave the house. We had a long catch up till I ran out of coffee and got too cold.

              10:00am: I bring Brian a coffee and a yogurt; and a banana even though he didn’t ask for one. There are three left, turning very brown on the counter. I think of Goldilocks: These bananas are too many. These bananas are too few. I try not to be angry about this. Maybe I’ll make smoothies later.

              11:00am Listen to a Moth Radio Hour podcast while I ride the exercise bike. Give up riding after seven minutes and pick up my crochet instead. Four granny squares done.

              12:00pm: My son and I play Rocket League: videogame soccer with cars and a giant ball. We play as a team against two online strangers. I score a goal and my son is so excited, he types, “You just got pwned by my mom!” in the chat box. I am very pleased.

              1pm: Make lunch: a recipe from my cookbook makes me smile: “Zach’s Old Favorite Lentils”. He used to ask me to make it all the time when he was little. He’s gigantic now. It seems impossible. I am so glad to have all this extra time with him. Even though yesterday he said, “Gah! Why are you SO annoying?! I mean, like, SOOOOO annoying!” He’s not wrong. I completely was being annoying. He has been texting a girl named Jenny, and I sang De La Soul’s, “Jenny—lost her favorite penny. So, I gave her a dollar! She kissed me and I hollered!” And I made Alexa play the song and I floss danced. So annoying! He said of De La Soul, “What is this trash music? Complete garbo.” I love how teenagers talk. (Btw, he hates it when my husband calls him “Emo”—whenever my son is in a grumpy, dark mood, my husband will say, “Whoa, whoa! What’s with all the emo today?” My son will scowl and say, “Ok, boomer.” And I shout from the kitchen, “Hey! We are NOT boomers!”
(We are Gen-Xers, thank you very much!)

              2:30 pm: My husband wants macaroni and cheese. I bring him some, drop it off and run away like usual. He calls down the stairs, “Is there any pepper?” and suddenly he bursts from his room and stands at the top of the stairs, singing, “Pepp-ER, Pep-PER, PeppER! Pepp-ER, Pep-PER, PeppER!” over and over again, doing the floss dance as he sings. After about ten seconds of this, he collapses against the doorway, panting, saying, “Whoo. That’s tiring!” And he retreats to the bedroom. That’s the most exercise he’s had in two weeks.

              3:00pm: Ask son to go for a walk with me. He says, “Nah, fam. Ima practice viola.” I listen to him play his pieces. When he gets to the scales, I go for a walk by myself, even though I don’t really want to. I think of Mary-Lou’s morale-march, and that gets me out of the house.

              3:10pm: I walk about half a block and end up (socially-distanced) behind a neighbor I am not fond of. I get tired of watching her yoga-panted hip-sway, and I turn around and walk home. Racoons and crows got into my neighbor Danny’s garbage (again) and I go around my ¼ acre, picking up his CVS bag, an empty cereal box liner, the plastic wrapper from a pack of gym socks and a lot of paper towel.

              3:45pm: I put on my Beats. Thank god for noise cancelling headphones: between the viola scales and my husband’s conference calls, I just want to listen to music in peace. 

              4:00pm: My husband is yelling at the top of his (compromised) lungs because I can’t hear him with my headphones on. Coincidentally, I’m listening to The Weeknd sing a song called “I’ve been the hardest to love.” Oh indeed. My husband begs me to bring in the mail. Fine. I consider myself lucky that I can go outside to get it. There’s a padded envelope addressed to him. He opens it like a kid at Christmas, so excited. “Wow! It came so fast! Yes! This is awesome!” Inside the envelope is a Lego Baby Yoda, one centimeter in size.

              4:20pm The sun is streaming in my window and I realize my guitar is getting baked. I play it so rarely and looking at it, I feel guilty. But I’m certainly not going to pick it up now, with my family lurking and listening. (Maybe I should play in my car?) My son and husband are the musical ones. My son is (was?) the concertmaster at Staples and an All-State violist. My husband can play piano by ear. He’ll hear a song on the radio and run downstairs and play it. I am, by contrast, very terrible at guitar. I have always wanted to play the cello, but I have no confidence that I’d be any good at that either.

              5:00pm Finish the NYT crossword and other puzzles. Ask my husband for the fifth time if he got his test results yet. Nope. Dinner tonight is going to be fried eggs. Then I’m going to read, watch one episode of something and I plan to be in bed by 11pm like a normal person. The End.