April 20

It is interesting to see new rhythms created even in a pandemic. To wit, the sweet spot for grocery shopping is not the minute the store opens. No, I have now learned if you show up about 45 minutes after it opens the number of other shoppers is very low. The crazies (raises hand!) who get there at the opening have left and it is too early for the sane people. Viola! A quick and relatively uneventful trip is completed.

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April 19

In ordinary times, today is the bookend to the shitty three-day stretch of anniversaries that started on the 17th with Pumpkin almost dying, for today is the anniversary of the day I met the infamous Special Lady Friend. When we dated, I did not get the "that's what she said" reference SLF would make. I just thought it was her way of showing her sexual edginess. Years later, when I started deep diving into The Office I of course recognized its origin. In the episode Sex Ed Michael talks to Holly, ostensibly to warn her that he might have herpes and that she should get checked out, but they have a back-and-forth that if SLF and I ever talked about the time we were together would be almost identical. 

To SLF, our (roughly) two months together was a good memory and she would say that I romanticize things (I do) and that I am making more of our time together that it was. But the irony is we became Jim and Pam after we broke up. No, she is not a receptionist and I am not a paper salesman, but for three years (!) after we broke up, we had those metaphorical chats at the front desk, except they were over the phone, sometimes for just a few minutes and sometimes for an hour or more. It even got to the point where I "pulled a Halpert" and (again, metaphorically) took a job at the Stamford branch (I moved practice groups so we were no longer working together). And yet, there was never a GRAND GESTURE, no Casino Night admission of love, or a stolen kiss afterwards, there was no interrupting a talking head interview to ask her out to dinner and her tearing up to the camera. No pizza on top of the Scranton Office Park building, or cinematic wedding at Niagara Falls, or finding out she was pregnant during an unrelated hospital visit (I TOLD YOU I HAVE WATCHED A LOT OF OFFICE EPISODES!!!) None of that. We just sort of disappeared from each other's life. 

After Michael spoke with Holly, he stewed for a bit and eventually called her back. She was not there so he left a message.

I wish I could leave that message for SLF and have that Hollywood ending (Holly of course comes back to Michael, they get married and live happily ever after). Instead, I am just left mourning something I will never have. 

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April 18

I went into work this morning. It was a tidy and efficient 90 minutes of work that needed to be done from the office. I am more than happy to trade off a few hours on a Saturday morning for being able to work from home Monday through Friday.

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April 17

I am sure I wrote about this on this day last year, but today is the anniversary of the day Pumpkin almost died. It's been four years now, and the only saving grace to this godforsaken pandemic is that I haven't really thought much about that day today. It was so awful and I am ETERNALLY grateful to Dr. Fejes and the medical professionals at CARES who saved her life. 

April 16

I had to go to 4 different stores this morning to find cat litter. My main Shop Rite had one bag (I wanted to get 3), Wal-Mart (zero), Wegmans (now not opening until 8 am, so ??) and then went to a second Shop Rite where I found one bag + one smaller bag. Not ideal. 

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April 15

At the risk of complaining about a true first world problem, the one thing I have noticed about working from home is that while it is much less stressful than going into the office, the day tends to stretch. Now, I start checking emails around 7 am and am often responding to them past 7 pm and sometimes even later. I feel like I'm "on call" more because unlike a normal workday, there is no longer a normal workday. I get emails past midnight and I sometimes write back at 5:30 in the morning. On the other hand, I can also sneak in a workout at a time that is more convenient for me and is in the privacy of my home and that makes my day more manageable too. All in all, I would probably opt to continue doing this after the restrictions are lifted, but I do not think I will have that option, so for now, I'm enjoying it as much as I can.

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April 14

It is so weird how much things have changed because of the coronavirus. I went to the grocery store this morning and there was a smattering of good toilet paper (triple-ply Charmin). It looked like buried treasure. I grabbed a 12-pack. That said, I also realized that there is an economic element to all this. The more expensive items, be they fancy soap or toilet paper I can afford, others cannot. I grabbed a 4 ounce bottle of hand sanitizer that was $5. Was I happy spending $5 on something that was probably (lightly?) gouged. No, but I can afford it. To someone else, that is a harder purchase to make. The whole thing frustrates me on a lot of levels, most of which I stew about after I make it out of the grocery store and sit in my car calming myself down.

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April 13

One nice thing about working from home is not having to deal with the weather. This morning, a heavy rain fell (and more is on the way this afternoon), but when you're locked inside 24/7, does the weather really matter?

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April 12

My across-the-street neighbor, a widow in her 70s, had her family over for Easter today. I was apoplectic watching them in her front yard - 10 or 12 of them in total, *not* respecting social distance and just pretending like we are not in the middle of a pandemic. My health is predicated on your willingness to follow the rules. I stewed and waited until they finally went inside before going outside myself (I had to mow the lawn - backyard only) but just could not believe how fucking irresponsible these fuck nuts were being, especially in New Jersey. We have more than 60,000 cases and 2,000 dead. Like, why idiots?

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April 11

I am at the point now where I memorize my grocery list and envision in my head my movements around the grocery store ahead of time to minimize the amount of time I spend in the grocery store. This morning it really paid dividends as I was in and out of the store in less than 15 minutes. 

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