Day 66

Day 66, self quarantine:

Behold the BEFORE picture of our backyard.

It took us two weeks to get here but the worst is behind us.

We took out 22 huge green trash bags last night but we worried about getting fined if we put out anything else so we stopped even though we could have kept going.

Next week the bikes, broken table, barbecues, and other items in this pic will be gone.

Oy, you should have seen the yard pre this “before” picture. I do have a photo.  Once the garden is finished, maybe I’ll swallow my pride and post it.

“What’s wrong with you?” I muttered under my breath several times, glaring at Gary as I swept up three feet of muck, lumps of charcoal and other discarded barbecue items.

You would not have known that twenty years ago, Gary spent an entire summer laying bricks back there.

Until this past weekend, you couldn’t even see the bricks.

I can’t blame him for all of it.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot.  Twenty years ago is right around when I discovered AOL and their evil little chat rooms.  Once introduced to the internet, I’m afraid I didn’t always feel like doing stuff around the house in my spare time and I hardly had any spare time to begin with.

From there it was a blog, MySpace, Facebook, and the dreaded Twitter...ugh, Twitter, how I hate you yet I still can’t stay away, even though you suspended my account for calling the Imbecile President and his hapless supporters very bad names. 😎

So it’s not all Gary.  I fess up.

And holy hell, I’m talking about Twitter the way tortured women talk about men.  We’re in an abusive relationship!

Okay, that’s enough of that.

Back to the garden - ooh, a Woodstock reference - once I discovered the internet, simultaneous to the kids being totally involved in the School of Rock, we stopped using the space for anything but storage and apparently spare trash for twenty years. But as bad as this pic is, I don’t think I’m being over optimistic that we will have a cool looking yard by July 4.

We planted those trees over twenty years ago.  They were in tiny pots and cost $10.

Gary put up the fence.  I made him use good wood and he admits he fought me on it...he has a weird cheap streak when it comes to home improvement products but has no problem dropping $500 for a meal and you don’t want to know what we spent on booze and dope in our heavy partying days.

But yeah, the fence is in awesome shape, we don’t have to touch it.

And once we really clean them up, the bricks are awesome, too.

I can’t wait to hang fairy lights back there.  I love the name, it’s so magical.  Fairy lights.   I think every home should have them, don’t you?

But I’m sticking to my promise to myself.  I’m not ordering anything for the yard until it‘s finished and we’re ready to decorate. Otherwise the project will be doomed and I will be the one who jinxed it.

Meanwhile, can I just say that Gary and I shlepped 22 trash bags and didn’t yell at each other once?

I’m loving this quarantine way too much.

So I think that’s it for today.  I’m not a fan of Wednesdays but I have a cool writing project going on at work so yesterday flew by and today should be more of the same.

Wait, did I just call the damages section of a Settlement Memo a cool writing project?  Hahaha omg, am I high?

Sadly, no.  Unless you count sugar.

Later, gators.

Day 65

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Day 65, self quarantine:

So I had my first office video conference call yesterday and to say it was a Saturday Night Live skit is putting it mildly.  It was so hilarious, so charming, so endearing I was kvelling all over the place.  Gary, who was in the kitchen cooking and overheard everything, was bent over double laughing.

Before the call, because I’m nuts and haven’t been out in months, I washed my hair and omg, even more importantly, I exfoliated my upper lip.  Don’t judge me.

Listen, I did an amazing job.

Though okay, it burned a little and the entire ten minutes I sat with it on, I was worried it was like acid eating through my skin and when I washed it off I would have raw open wounds where my upper lip once was and my video call would be totally fucked.

It was glorious.  I no longer resemble Groucho Marx and/or Tom Selleck.

So yeah, I was bummed we didn’t do zoom, instead we did our call via google.  I wanted to be one of those squares, damn it. The google thing was cool, though.  You’re a little avatar in the margin but every time you speak, you go full screen.  I snapped this pic of myself on the screen after I blurted out something about wanting to see my boss’ new beard and forgetting everyone could hear me.

What the call turned out to be was the founding partner of our firm missing everyone.  He’s eighty years old, he had the young IT guy in our office set up the call, which he took while riding in his car.

He never quite got the hang of it.

Omg, he took attendance the first 20 minutes of the call. There’s only like 15 of us.

I can't even.  

I’m changing the names to protect the innocent.

"Where's Ben?  I don’t see Ben.  There’s Linda.  Hi, Linda. Linda?  Linda?  Who's Linda?" 

"That’s Donna,” sighed his long suffering  assistant.

"Oh, hello, Donna. Wait, where’s Donna, now I can't see her.  I'm in my car.  It's a new car.  I got it right before the virus.  It parks itself.  Hey, at least they’re opening the golf courses.  Does anybody golf?  Ben, is that you?  You have a beard!  There’s Robin.  Hi, Robin.  Wait, where’s Ben?  I don’t see Ben. Oh, there he is.  Ben, I like your beard.”

I’m not even lying.  This went on for twenty minutes.  In between, Gary is walking in and out of the kitchen with stuff for me to taste and I can’t say Mmmm or I’ll appear on the screen with the spoon in my mouth.

“So this virus, we lost a lot of people.  It’s terrible. Terrible.  It‘s the death squad.  I’d like to tell you when we’ll be back in the office...”

...at which point my ears perk up...

“...it could be a week...”

No no no

“...it could be two weeks...”

NO

“... it could be another month...”

Keep talking...keep talking...

“...it could be two months.”

YES

“The virus will dictate.  We have to wait and see.”

So that was wonderful to hear.  We’re not being rushed back too soon, and I had a long heart to heart talk with my boss about my feelings earlier and we even discussed what changes would have to be made in our physical office before I felt confident enough to come back, virus aside.

For one thing, I’m not taking the elevator.  We’re on the second floor, give me a key to the door, I’m taking the stairs.

And the bathrooms...where to begin...

Stuff like that.

So we’ll see.  The main thing is, my boss now knows how I feel and won’t be blindsided in case things don’t end up working out and I decide to extend quarantine forever.

Oh, back to the conference call, it ended with, “This was great!  Maybe we’ll do it again next week!”

Oy.  Okay.  Hey, at least I’ll have another reason to wash my hair.

In other news, I’m unusually excited for a Tuesday. Starting at 7:00 tonight we can put out trash, which will lead to serious progress in the garden.  I can’t wait to have that solid “before“ picture.

This is what my quarantine has come down to.  I’m excited for trash day. 

It could be worse.

Ugh, maybe I better not joke about that.

Onward, fellow apocalypse dudes.