V-Log: Space, the Final Frontier
What’s on *your* floor?
Oh, what is there to say…really? The floors are a mess: covered in boxes, dogs, and plastic bags that my neighbors have brought me groceries in. The dogs are shedding and nature has taken over my house and yard. Literally dozens of gopher or ground squirrel holes are making it a hazard to walk in the yard. Which is just as well because it has rained mercilessly all through March, and April has begun pretty much the same way this week. The dogs don’t go out during the rain, even to do #1 or #2, lying on their rugs just twitching from holding their bladders. Some kind of cheeky water cats walk along the edge of the backyard not bothered by the rain, since the dogs aren’t out to mark their territory. Spiders have become so brazen they are actually climbing down their silk ladders and sitting on my face as I made this video.
Packages arrive like clockwork as my medical and household needs are fulfilled by online ordering. Not GrubHub or DoorDash. No siree Bob! I cook my own meals. It just seems easier to leave the packaging on the kitchen counters after I wait the previously recommended delay time of a few hours without touching them. I had already extended that wait time on my own to at least a day before the NIH changed their guidelines this week. Now even a day may not be long enough for the virus to…abracadabra…disappear! What’s a girl to do? There is havoc in the kitchen…potatoes elbow tomatoes, onions roll with limes, bread loaves have rented space on top of the microwave…everyone in the kitchen is doing whatever the heck they want!
Dishes line the height of the sink, sometimes crusted with whatever was eaten out of them, without being soaked. I’m using clean dishes right out of the dishwasher until that one last spoon in the sink threatens to undo the delicate balance of bowls and plates and cups piled higher than Mount Everest. There have been mornings when I have dug around…oh so delicately… for just 2 cups to have my lemon tea and my chai throughout the day. There was an evening when no clean plates were to be found so I did what for me was the unthinkable…I used a paper plate! Everything I need regularly now sits on the kitchen counter because I have neither the patience nor the flexibility to bend down and put things away in the bottom cabinets constantly. I am repeatedly questioning the nature of my reality. Who am I? Is this now? Does this go back to whatever normal used to be? What is normal, anyway?
No laundry has been done since I got sick in early March. I’m using towels right out of the clean load still sitting unfolded on a table next to the washer and dryer, taking a few washcloths at a time to the kitchen to wipe up cooking messes so that I don’t use my last surviving paper towel roll which is being strictly rationed. Luckily, my cotton nightgowns are still working well as daily uniforms since no one but my dogs sees me, and over which I drape my purty shawls when I’m making these videos. Hah! Truth will out!! Eventually the smell from the dirty laundry will become irresistible to the dogs and they will, no doubt, loll and roll about that pile of puppy heaven.
Once I was known as the queen of clean. My mom actually weaponized my tendency to cope with stress by keeping a clean house with an even cleaner kitchen against my sisters who did not live in the US at the time and who did not have the privilege of my cleaner environment then. To them, on behalf of my mother, today I offer a heartfelt apology.
What’s happening at *your* house?
Tell.me.everything. Spill the beans!
