Social distancing with Zoom, Wine with DeWine, the perks of being non-essential and more. Mike Woody shares his experience of quarantine during Ohio's COVID19 stay-at-home order.
Mission: Non-Essential. My Life in Pajamas
Another COVID19 day with nowhere to go, it’s becoming the norm for people all across the country during this coronavirus quarantine. Thought my social life couldn’t get any worse, it has. I went out more while in high school, at least then I could go to Blockbuster.
The mornings begin with the day’s biggest decision, whether to get dressed or not? Usually not. A perk of being non-essential is staying in my pajamas all day. This is the least amount of laundry I’ve ever had to do in a week. My wife isn’t so lucky, she is working from home and does video calls, so needs to look professional from the waist up. She is following the latest fashion trend of a nice shirt and pajama pants.
Families are really getting re-acquainted with one another. I’d be interested in knowing how many governors that made the stay at home order have children living with them. I’m guessing not many. Parenting all day long is a lot of work. Nothing makes you miss going to your 9 to 5 job more than trying to learn how to teach ‘new Math.’
With all of us home for three meals a day, there’s been a big rise in dirty dishes. Ends up I’m essential after all, as a dishwasher. Making breakfast, lunch and dinner is hard enough, but it's even more challenging under these conditions. I consider myself qualified to be a contestant on ‘Chopped’ from being able to formulate some semblance of a meal out of the limited options available at the grocery. There’s been so much attention given to the search for toilet paper, but items of much less necessity have been scarce. I haven’t been able to find tomato soup for three weeks. Turns out, adding some hot water to some ketchup is close to the same.
Other than the ‘Tiger King’ the other Must - See TV is the daily press conference with Governor DeWine, Dr. Acton and the charismatic interpreter. It’s lasted for more episodes than a lot of shows do. Many refer to it as ‘Wine with DeWine Time.’ Was nice while it lasted, but our supply is now dry. I recorded it one day and watched it over and over.
The safest form of social distancing during coronavirus is Zoom. Grandparents all across the country have had to learn how to do more than send forwards and play solitaire on their computers. We Zoom with my parents and have become well acquainted with their foreheads. Governor DeWine should cover how to properly hold devices so your face can be seen while doing a video chat. I had never noticed all the dust on my parent’s ceilings until Zoom.
Speaking of technology, Facebook has become a social hotspot. With so much free time, people have been active users. I now know 10 things that all my friends don’t like that everyone else does and all sorts of other useless knowledge from surveys.
This is the most time my wife and I have spent together since we’ve been married. I’d like to see a graph on the number of divorces that have occurred during the quarantine. I bet that curve hasn’t flattened. Thankfully I haven’t gotten the Virus, but my wife might kill me if this lasts much longer. I keep reminding her that I’m essential, someone has to do all the dishes.
On a serious note, these are difficult times for all of us as it’s a way of life we aren’t accustomed to living. Everyone is sacrificing a lot. Doing nothing has always been what I do best, but this has made doing nothing even difficult.
However, life will eventually return to normal, and a positive from all this is then we can more fully appreciate the little things that we so often take for granted such as hugging your parents or bumping into someone, literally, in the grocery aisle.
