We're in the thick of things, but towards the beginning is my best orientation about now.
Seattle and surrounding South King County may be a bit post-apocalyptic on the outside, but on the inside...
Ok, on the inside, it looks like friggin' Mad Max Jr.: Birthday Balloon in the Thunderdome. But seriously, I have cleaned. Several times.
We survive. Sometimes with bubbles. Sometimes with side walk chalk on the balcony
Sometimes even finding a rogue parking lot to stomp around in, while avoiding zombies.
Life goes on. We go on.
Seriously I have read complaints about how isolated and cold American life - particularly Seattle freeze life - is most of my life. I thought we were all supposed to be dissociative hermits who live our sad little lives on our phones and shrink from human contact with plaintive hissing, but actually turns out we all wanna be near each other all the time. Right up in each other's drooly spittled faces while stroking each other's groceries blowing our noses on each other's sleeves. Ah well.
Meanwhile, we're also all washing our friggin fruits and veg with soap, and undressing outdoors before wiping our mail down with ethyl alcohol and setting our outer clothes on fire before going inside.
This, at least, is my combined impression of having been out briefly and having spent a lot of time on social networking. Also, bread. We all make a lot of bread these days and are all pretty certain to come out of this several pounds heavier than before. This is another thing I've learned from (1) social networking, (2) my own scarcity stress eating that means I'm about ready to pour a giant jug of goldfish down my throat by 7 a.m. and wash it down with a bowl full of M&Ms in milk (totally counts as cereal).
But yeah. It's a crazy world out there. And grocery stores are scary.
I've mostly stayed home - other than some walking - and ordered groceries. This of course just means somebody other than me gets to shoulder all the risk of being breathed on, but... but...
We made them a nice sign to look at as they drop our groceries in front of the door and run away so we never have to see each other! So that's almost equity. Almost. I tip?
Going from shopping almost daily to once a week is an adjustment. I've mostly learned that we go through a lot of food. I had some idea, but not like seeing it all cumulatively on my porch all at once. And definitely nothing really brings it home like running out of everything two or three days before your next order is coming even though it felt like you were shopping for a month. So... learning curve exists, but is nowhere near exponential. I'll figure it out. Plenty of time in this particular sheltering experience.
Speaking of places to shelter...
We are now pending on a townhouse in High Point neighborhood of West Seattle. After we'd fallen in love with a townhouse that was taking offers last Saturday, our realtor sent us a last minute listing in the same complex as the house we'd previously lost (sniff sniff). This happened on Friday night while we were putting together our offer for the second townhouse.
Of course we had half a morning to see it and decide whether it was the true house to rule them, before otherwise making an offer on the other townhouse, and we... we did all that. The neighborhood is awesome.
The house itself is a townhouse. Seen one townhouse, seen twenty. Three stories. Airy. Modern. Open plan on the main level. Nice windows. Two bedrooms on the top. With a study area for Andrew to work-from-home as needed. With a little yard that isn't too big. With the modern amenities one would expect. Townhouse. All of them. Pretty much.
Well, the kitchen in this one is in between the "living room" and "dining room" areas, which is a little bit of a divergence of the classic model. The kitchen island is a bit ridiculous. I'm pretty sure you could do two surgeries on it at once while making dinner (not medically advised, but possible). But mostly... it's a townhouse.
But, really best neighborhood we could possibly afford by a long shot.
So we let the other house go and made an offer on this house instead (fi you're keeping score this is the third house we've seriously contemplated buying, and the five bajillionth house we've looked at in the last couple of months)... We made this offer on the same evening that the Stay at Home order was put in place for Washington. I don't usually strong arm the governor to add a little pressure on sellers in these scenarios, but I imagine they recognized the same last chance that we did and... match made in heaven. They would happily stay there until July, which is when their new house opens up. We have a lease until June. So we're closing in mid-to-late May and hoping things are a little less strange by then.
For the foreseeable future, we're sussing out mortgage stuff and looking at HOA documents and gradually going through a process we've typically hurried through, while sheltering the crap out of our current apartment.
In other news, I feel like a true Seattle-suburbish-ite.
Not only have we been staying-at-home-staying-healthy ever since we got back from Jersey, but I have officially been tested for the covids.
Side note: I like that we've gone from "coronavirus" to "covid-19," because:
(1) I like to say "the covids" with a slight southawn accent. "Honey chil' shah don't got the covids today" I drawl as our super smeller spazzes over apparently not liking the way her father's night shirt smells, while she's burrowing under the bed covers where he's sleeping. (Incidentally, he smells great. But if his pheromones don't do it for her, I'm ok with that).
(2) Covid-19 as sung to C'mon Eileen. Once you start, it's hard to stop. Not that I haven't had "ma ma ma my corona" stuck in my head for the last month, but see... I'm ready for a new song.
But yes, I signed up and was chosen for a study that involves covid-19 testing.
This was not the really fun naso-pharyngeal alien biopsy drive-thru test. Instead I took a pendingly FDA approved test that can be self administered at home and only makes you really want to sneeze for a while. It's part of a Washington study meant to get a better sense of the actual community spread, since most testing is still limited to people with high risk (due to profession, age or condition) and severe symptoms. My greatest virtue as a volunteer was that I get up really early in the morning, so there were still spots when I signed up. It is FULL and got there fast.
Results were negative. Which means I definitely don't absolutely definitely have it. Because there are false negatives. And that test sample was taken last week. Any number of door knobs or husband leaning 2 feet away from friendly auto assessors and then kissing me (this is how we roll in our household, baby) could have occurred in the interim. But, for science! I'll swab my nose thrice daily if necessary. In a time of great uncertainty, it was reassuring to do any little thing to regain a sense of agency and participation. And science. I even do science, bro.
We're doing some science here too.
What floats. What doesn't. Experiment. More things float than I had anticipated. Luckily none of daddy's electronics were tested. This time.
And since this is the new quarantine fad, we've also done created some food...
As Andrew has urged me to add, "Follow me on my Pinterest for more recipes"
Like...
Even though kids yoga is no longer popular, and Chaya yells at me "I wanna watch and NOT move and JUST sit" to be perfectly clear on that note, we've worked in some physical activity.
Chaya got pretty distracted finding the worms in all the puddles and trying to guess whether they were dead or alive. We also saw some other bugs and some feathers and some trash. It was, in short, also a nature walk and... more science.
I'm NAILING this homeschool thing that we're not actually doing because my kid is 4.5, we're probably going to keep her in Pre-k another year and I'm a friggin' lapsed lawyer, not a teacher and I'm wise enough to know the difference.
To keep it social, we've also continued doing our video chats on a variety of platforms. And even had our first virtual dinner party. It was a video chat that occurred during dinner with good family friends.
One of their kids was acting up more than Chaya, so it was very pleasant. There is nothing like other people's kids. So charming and cute when they aren't yours. Really true. We adults couldn't hear anything the other said and it broke down eventually when it got too close to bed time and there were time outs and the like to accomplish. So... a lot like an ordinary dinner party with kids, except with significantly more distortion.
I've been holding up pretty well, though I admit I had a little cry when we got a preschool newsletter talking about the plans to reopen schools after April 26th, and thinking that this probably won't actually happen and Chaya may never see her preschool teachers or friends again. There's definitely grief in the new-normal sometimes
And that's kind of how it goes. We're all gonna die. But we'll be restless and bored in the interim. And big things and little things will still pepper themselves in with a little extra missing.
And it will always be somebody's birthday somewhere, so we'll put our birthday crowns on and put more birthday crowns on our balloons and keep going as long as we can... washing our hands and occasionally dousing our veggies in acid just to mark the times.
Stay safe everyone. I'd say "stay sane," but... who are we kidding. These are not the times for that nonsense.
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