- Dishes:
With no dishwasher, living in a one bedroom Manhattan apartment during a pandemic, I am doing dishes all. the. time.
At first I thought I'd write - I feel like I'm doing dishes all the time. But no. Actually. I am washing them virtually nonstop. Morning coffee, breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner, chamomile tea before bedtime...there are so many dishes to wash.
-Puzzle Pieces. And Patience:
Life is a puzzle. This we know. But so is my apartment. Everything has a place. (Everything has to have a place.) But to get to that one thing you usually have to move the other two things that are stored in front of it or on the side of it or maybe you need to grab that step ladder or, no wait, pull these seven things out to get to what is stored in the back there... And then, after you reach said thing make sure you put everything else back exactly as you found it - otherwise nothing will ever fit back in its particular space, ever again and then you're doomed.
- Toilet Paper:
I am amazed and mystified by how fast I go through toilet paper. I live alone! I am one person! I do not suffer from incontinence issues! Do I really go to the bathroom THAT much? Or is it just that in pre-pandemic life I was so busy using other people's toilet paper in other bathroom stalls that I never noticed how easy it is to use up a single role of TP? (*Editors note - I do not condone toilet paper hoarding.*)
- Neighbors:
Before Covid, I sort of maybe noticed my neighbors? Like maybe that one guy that was always smoking outside my building? But now...I know them ALL. Not by name of course and heaven forbid I have a conversation with any of them...no I mean that ala Jimmy Stewart Rear Window style, I know who walks which dogs when, which person cannot parallel park their BMW for anything, who does a Zumba class at the same time I'm doing my yoga class, and on and on.
On surviving this Pandemic life:
- Walking:
It is my saving grace of 2020/2021. The days I get up and out of bed, pull on sweatpants, sneakers and my mask and get outside for a walk before I do anything else (even before a cup of coffee) put me in a markedly better mood than the days I don't. Walking. Outdoors. It's the best cure-all I can think of! I love it in the morning, midday, or even as the sun sets. There is no substitute for stretching our legs and getting that fresh air my friends.
- Stretching:
Tied for the 2020/2021 cure-all. Much in the same vein as the getting outdoors...yoga is saving my soul. Let's be honest, yoga was busy saving my soul BEFORE the world shut down but now its working overtime. When the calendar flipped to 2021, I made a goal to do a minimum of 15 minutes of yoga every day in the month of January. I succeeded with that goal. (Yay.) When the calendar flipped to February I decided I'd try my best to keep going with that same goal - minimum 15 minutes a day. So far, so good. Please. If you're reading this (thank you) stop for a few minutes. Get up. Stretch to the left and the right. Move around a bit. You'll feel better, I swear it.
- Afternoon sunlight:
I miss my beloved Cambridge apartment immensely, even after 2 1/2 years gone. Among the things I miss is the intense sunlight I could count on in that apartment. Where I am now, in true New York fashion, I never get direct sunlight. (Sigh). But. There is a sliver of time, which falls between about 2:15-3:30 right now mid-winter, where the sunlight gets reflected off of the buildings across from me giving the illusion of direct sunlight. It shines in my eyes and on my desk where I work all day and I never, ever consider shutting the blinds or moving from my desk in that 45 minute window because it's my favorite part of the afternoon. I sit, I work, and I soak it all up, right alongside my two little houseplants who are slowly dying due to that lack of sun. I'm sorry, little plants. If only they could do yoga.
On Adulthood:
- Monotony:
Sometimes I think one of the reasons I don't write here as much as I used to (besides, you know, having job that takes up 110% of my brain space every day now) is that I'm in the middle of it all in this life. I'm past my days of first apartments and first jobs and first loves and first heartbreaks and all the firsts of things I got to experience in my twenties and thirties. Which is not to say my forties don't come with their own gifts (I was skeptical at best but they do, they really do, #1 gift being you can suddenly sift out what matters and what doesn't so much faster...) but it's a different life these days. Amazing and beautiful and one I love so much - but just not quite as squeaky shiny and new.
- Unexpected Joys:
Despite the above mentioned monotony, there are some moments that hit me - when, say, I call a restaurant that I know a friend is having her birthday dinner at and order a bottle of champagne to be delivered to her table; or when I laugh with a stranger over something we both happened to simultaneously witness on the street; or when I'm alone in my apartment cooking dinner with the music turned up, a favorite song comes on, and I dance around my teeny tiny kitchen solo, that I think to myself. This. This is what I always thought/hoped adulthood might be like. Here we are. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it amazing?
On back to surviving this Pandemic life:
Life is amazing and awful and amazing again and then awful again but I love it so much. I hang on through the awful because the amazing is, well, it takes my breath away.
2021 is dawning a strange and surreal existence, so I hope you're hanging in my friends. We're in some awful times right about now. But there's a lot of amazing in there too. I promise. I hope you catch the amazing and the wonderful when they appear. I hope they knock your socks off.
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