…quite a lot these days. my 20-year-old son is in college living with his paternal grandparents who are completely freaked out and have their home on lockdown. my teenaged daughter is living with her dad while she attends a special charter high school that she was lucky enough to get into and their home is on lockdown as well. i’ve stopped by once to visit her but yelling at each other through an open window from the street felt so weird that the experiment has not been repeated.

i’ve been desperate to keep in touch with both of them and i am missing them both very thoroughly and i try to keep in touch with facetime and phone calls but since i’m the only member of this equation not on lockdown and any conversation that consists of half an hour of i-love-you-i-miss-you-so-much-when-is-this-going-to-be-over repeatedly would just be weird our conversations have been pretty brief and mostly consist of, “still doing that old staying-at-home thing? how’s your cat?”

i wish i could see my kids. but since i can’t and our gym is closed my husband and i have developed other coping mechanisms that mainly consist of a shitload of overtime, running and drinking a lot.

quarantine may push me into needing a 12-step program but at least my bank account will be robust.

someone shouted “go home!” from a blue dodge ram the other day while i was out for a run which i found hilarious because a road-worthy dodge. weird.

i was properly social distancing from a dude in the dog park the other day who said, “you know your dog can give it to you.”

“i guess we’ll find out when the experts weigh in.” i responded.

“i’m a pathologist.”

oh.

so now, since my dog is a slobbering fool for belly rubs who is congenitally incapable of social distancing i find myself jumping up on counters a lot from where i lecture him on high. i make sure to shout loud enough for the neighbors to hear lest they believe i’m flaunting this Very Serious Threat To Public Health. we live in america so naturally i do this in english and i’m not sure how much of it is getting through but i have one of the more intelligent breeds so i think he must at least be understanding it at the level of a 4-year-old.

i mean, my dog has figured out how to get me to pick up his poop and share filet with him so i figure he’s smarter than at least 99.9999% of the population who haven’t figured out how to get me to do those things for them.

i can’t wait until we get to the part where someone says something about covid and we collectively think, “yeah. that was weird.” and then go back to whatever stupid shit we were doing.