Day 118, self quarantine:
Happy Friday and happy day off to me! I actually slept in today - Jake and I didn’t get out of bed
until 6:00 a.m.
I’ve always been jealous of people who can sleep past
8:00 a.m.
Okay, I’m lying. People who sleep late waste the day!
Omg, it took me years to get over that Gary is “one of them.” I used to get so frustrated
at 10:00 a.m. on the weekends - the sun shining in, me awake for six hours already, and I could literally hear Gary still snoring from downstairs.
I turned that time into valuable “me” space and now I get annoyed if he wakes up before 10.
Go figure.
So yesterday I was all set to begin my three day weekend when my phone rang. It was our accountant. He was concerned because he hadn’t received our tax stuff for our no contact phone appointment later that day.
Jfc, I completely forgot all about that. We had our annual appointment for our taxes a couple weeks before the usual
April 15 deadline and just as we were first quarantined. They extended the deadline to
July 15 and my accountant rescheduled us for a telephone appointment yesterday.
So we had no choice but to scurry around the house and grab all our paperwork and fly down to South Philadelphia at the end of the day to drop everything off in the mail-slot of his office so he can call me
Saturday at 5:00 for our no contact appointment.
You can imagine how enthusiastic I was about that whole nightmare.
I had been up since
4:00 a.m. busting my ass at work since it was my getaway day for a three day vacation and now I had to make sure I had all our tax stuff, get out of my pajamas and drive to South Philadelphia.
I was pissed and didn’t want to go.
So. Because I’m a big baby, whenever I have to do something I don’t want to do, I make sure there’s a reward system in place.
We get gifted at Casa Slick every time something great OR awful happens.
The reward/gift is almost always food because, well, food.
Last night we had to go to South Philadelphia.
That just screamed PIZZA.
Gary was instantly on board.
“Marra’s?” he asked hopefully.
Marra’s is the best. Except you can’t get Marra’s to go. I have never seen a pizza go from sublime to terrible so quickly. The minute you put a brick oven Marra’s pizza in a box, it takes on the taste and texture of cardboard.
So no, no Marra’s.
I had my eye on Mack’s Boardwalk Pizza.
I mean, the name alone.
It was only blocks away from the accountant.
We had tried that pizza years ago and liked it but at the time, his store was more of a garage and Gary wasn’t thrilled with the set up so we never went back. Then I read they moved to a real storefront in the Italian Market and I made a mental note to try it again.
And forgot.
“I’m gonna call and order when we get to Washington Avenue,” I said to Gary excitedly in the car.
“Why?” Gary never understands any kind of planning.
“What if they tell us there’s an hour wait?”
Gary rolled his eyes.
In retrospect, it’s good one of us is a planner because when I called...
“The number you have dialed is not in service.”
Oh, no!
“Maybe it’s disconnected because of the pandemic,” Gary said. “We’ll drive by after we drop our tax stuff off.”
“Yeah, that must be it. Google and Yelp are listing them as open,” I agreed.
Because I had my heart set on that pizza and I had no plan B.
“There it is,” Gary said. “Closed.”
“But...why?” I asked, as if Gary would know.
Actually he did know.
“Uhhh...because there’s a pandemic?”
Wow.
You know, I noticed during our drive that Philadelphia is far from back to normal. Half the stores in downtown Philadelphia are still boarded up. Restaurants are shuttered and dark.
At 5:00 p.m. on a
Thursday night, there was no traffic, either vehicular or pedestrian.
It still looks like a scene out of Mad Max.
“So what are we doing?” Gary asked. “Now that you have Jake and me primed for pizza.”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Gah, too much pressure. Wait! What about Lorenzo’s?”
Lorenzo’s Pizza is an Italian Market mainstay. I think it’s been around since I was a kid.
“Okay,” Gary said. “It’s right up the street. “Are you sure they’re open?”
“Yeah, they even have Covid-19 parameters on their website.”
We drove to Lorenzo’s and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Closed.
“But why?” I asked Gary again like a little kid.
“There’s a pandemic, Rob.”
I had one more idea, one I was sure wouldn’t work.
A few weeks ago, Julie sent me a video about a guy eating a pizza from a place in South Philadelphia called Angelo’s.
You really need to watch this.
It was one of those small batch millennial “places.” They only take cash, the only way you can order is via phone but half the time it’s busy, and if you go to their website it says “sold out.”
I told Gary none of this.
He’d never go to a place like that in a million years.
But I was desperate for good pizza though to be honest, I thought they’d be closed, too.
We drove up and not only were they open, there was a parking space right outside where the heavily tattooed young owner was leaning against the wall, having a smoke.
Gary jumped out of the car with his long hair and sunglasses and it was almost hilarious how the owner fawned over him.
“What can I get for you, my dude!”
His reaction was even weirder as we watched about 25 people walk up asking for pizza while we sat in the car waiting for ours and he turned them all away.
“You gotta call and order the dough in advance!” he yelled.
“But your phone is busy.”
“Try harder!”
Gary and I looked at each other. This guy was the Pizza Nazi but for whatever reason he took a liking to Gary and Gary ended up getting out of the car and talking with him and of course by the end of the conversation he knew we had a drummer son, bass playing daughter and singer songwriter daughter-in-law.
“I knew you were somebody,” he said. “Enjoy the pizza, Gary! Come back any time!”
So that was cool.
I texted Julie from the car on the way home.
She was suitably jealous.
Look at this pizza.
It’s a thing of beauty, isn’t it?
“Omg omg omg,” I moaned while eating.
And I just realized I wrote an entire post in homage to pizza.
And that’s how it should be.
Enjoy Friday, everyone.
