(masks my mother made)
there are some things i have enjoyed about the quarantine… i like not having to drag my kids out of bed by seven so we can leave for school at eight. they really prefer to sleep in until somewhere between eight thirty and nine and are generally more pleasant when they wake naturally.
(the littlest two… the big one doesn’t want me to post pictures of him sleeping!)
i don’t miss urging them to get their cleats on or fill their water bottles and schlepping them around in carpools to soccer practice or hip hop or trumpet rehearsals. often i felt like an unpaid uber driver with ungrateful clients who never tipped and left wrappers and goldfish crumbs in the back of the car.
(what the backseat of my car looks like after carpool)
i can’t believe i’m admitting this, but i am so grateful for all the long nature walks with hank and my kids… even when they start out complaining or arguing… eventually as we circle the lake (we are experts now - we can ALWAYS find it AND make our way home) they start sharing interesting thoughts or observations or worries or fears… we’ve been having great conversations. and hank is so svelte and fit now… i don’t even have to feel guilty about sharing my scrambled eggs or prosciutto with him.
(hank before corona)
(what hank looks like now)
photo credit: warren photographic
we have been waving at our adopted neighborhood grandma on the “i” street at all different times of the day when we are biking or walking around. we didn’t see her for a while and were really nervous she was sick, but she has returned to her front window and she always waves back. we even met her son when he was delivering some groceries… he MIGHT have thought it was a bit odd that we were paused below her window frantically gesturing, but he didn’t tell us to stop.
(what our grandma looks like when she waves at us)
we saw an amazing movie: “peanut butter falcon” the other night. it takes place in the marshes of north carolina and is both beautifully shot and such a touching, human story. we felt so hopeful about the goodness of people afterward.
(BEST movie)
i also just finished “where the crawdads sing” (i am probably the last person on the planet to read it!) it is set in those same marshes and definitely puts the isolation of our quarantine into perspective. i don’t really like live birds (i had a traumatic run in with a pigeon in my twenties) especially gulls, but delia owens described them in such a way that i am now obsessed. i also really want to try “cornbread in crackling” and got one of the last boxes of cornmeal at the safeway on my last run… i just have to figure out what crackling is.
(BEST book)
i think i am in love with new york’s governor cuomo. he is so calm and measured, yet warm and comforting at the same time. the other day he started talking about all the great phone calls he’s had with his mother, reminding us to take advantage of unexpected opportunities during this time… completely endearing. when this is all over i will be going to new york to get married (i wikipediaed him and he’s SINGLE!) i will use michelle and jackie as my first lady role models because surely i will end up living in 1600 pennsylvania avenue within the decade.
(my new boyfriend)
of course my kids can’t attend cotillion classes this year (even though the girls DO wear little white gloves), but we’ve been watching “curb” and using that as a jumping off point for a lot of discussion about what is socially acceptable behavior. we’ve found that larry is frequently put in very uncomfortable situations not of his making (that he eventually makes ten thousand times worse) but he is not always the initial culprit. for example, in one episode a mere acquaintance asks him for a letter of recommendation in the middle of a dinner party and he can’t refuse without looking ungenerous. we decided that was an unfair position for the acquaintance to put larry in and it should have been a private discussion. or when he flies all the way to aspen from la to visit his new girlfriend in the hospital after she’s broken her leg skiing. we agreed that the girlfriend was being petty and unreasonable when she complained about how long it took him to arrive and threw him straight out of her room, but KEPT the balloon bouquet. or the “lazy susan” episode where one dinner guest got into a flap and spun the susan so hard that the red duck sauce splurted out of the bowl and landed on larry’s seat. somehow he was blamed for that. on the other hand, larry DOES frequently ask totally inappropriate questions. when this happens, we pause the show and analyze it… it’s almost the same as cotillion, except we haven’t been practicing the fox trot.
(larry david’s curb your enthusiasm)
(norman rockwell’s cotillion dance)
lucy and i have also been having lots of spa DAYS (we used to just have spa evenings, but now we have loads of time.) we hang out in the tub with candles and cocktails and shubert - i even dim the lights (normally i like it as bright as an OR so i can see whatever dirty things need to be scrubbed off my kids but lately my need to calm down is trumping my grooming compulsions) to create a soothing atmosphere and we do face masks and manis and pedis. it has also become a bit of a hair salon. i have now managed to color my own hair twice and i trimmed lucy’s (to be fair - it’s just a straight line across.) i was VERY nervous to do this as the last time i attempted hair cutting was ten years ago when i was nine months pregnant with lu. i asked my hair guy (we were still in amsterdam) to layer the sides and for some reason he refused (maybe because i was completely bonkers with hormones?) when i got home i was so angry that i just took the kitchen scissors and chopped diagonally on both sides. it was NOT pretty - i had these weird bits by my ears that looked like straight payes (sidelocks on orthodox jewish men) hanging down awkwardly. we moved to boulder a few months later and i met my beloved colorist (and stylist) liz straight away. at our first meeting we went over my color goals and then she gently picked up one of my payes and said, “do you want to talk about these?)
(my REALLY unfortunate haircut… even lucy is like WTF!)
(classic orthodox payes)
photo credit: nyafuu archive
but my most favorite corona activity has been the zoom happy hours with my high school friends… AMAZING! the first one was set up by a girlfriend in california and was meant to start at 5:30 pacific standard time. i got mixed up about the time difference and was all ready with my drink at 4:30 pm. nobody was there and i finally figured out that it wouldn’t be starting until 6:30 colorado time… since i’d already poured my drink, i just drank it, thinking of the corona meme, “you think it’s bad now? in twenty years our country will be run by people home schooled by day drinkers.” i DID pause then and didn’t have a second drink until the zoom actually happened. it was so much FUN to see everyone - CW even wore his letterman jacket for the occasion… i LOVE my high school friends!
(zooming with my hs friends)
* update on the cotillion… we had to curb the “curb”… there was one episode about a blow up sex doll and another about the “big johnson club” … too hard to explain to lucy. we’ll have to find another way to work on manners.
* update on the walks… hank is getting TIRED of them. now he just lays down wherever he can and refuses to get up until he is good and ready!
