Alone Together

Well, things are starting to unravel over here. I know this because the dog just growled at my six year old.  Do you know how bad things have to be for a golden retriever to growl at someone? Those dogs love everyone. If he's grumpy, imagine how cats feel. 

The thing is, I know we have it pretty good over here. We have so many streaming platforms I've lost count. We have a big enough house where everyone can have their own space to spread out, although for some reason my kids seem to think that being on top of each other is the best way to spread germs - er - self quarantine. We also have plenty of toilet paper. We might be the only people NOT freaking out about toilet paper but the thing is we are a boy house. My kids might use toilet paper once a day.  Judging by their underwear, often less. 

And we have food.  Oh, do we have food. My way of feeling like I'm in control of this situation is to go to the grocery store and walk up and down the aisles throwing anything and everything into my cart that I think we *might* need in the next week/month/year/however long it takes to get enough test kits into the hands of doctors. Some of my purchases make sense, like 12 cans of chicken noodle soup and four jars of spaghetti sauce. Some of them are less clear but if the store is rationing eggs, I must need more. If we get tired of eating them we could always color them because egg-coloring kits were on sale. And some of it requires deeper digging to rationalize, like 6 scented candles, but keep in mind that I live with four dudes and a dog.

And yet. Boredom has started to sink in and I can feel the kids getting stir crazy. To be honest, I'm surprised it took until Thursday to get to this point. When this quarantine sitch really got going my main anxiety wasn't coming down with a fever and dry cough, but being stuck in my house with three boys who are constant motion. I resigned myself years ago to the fact that I don't have art project kids. I have ball-throwing, wrestling-match-having, bouncing off the walls boys. I've come to love their sweaty bodies and flushed faces after sports practices. I love that they have enough natural untamed energy between the three of them to power a small country. And I love that now that they are 11, 9 and 6, my husband can take them to a gym and let them run around and I have time to do the things that I like to do. Like art projects.

But with no gyms to go to and the weather being chilly and damp, all of that energy is starting to become a problem. A game of Monopoly unraveled this morning when the kids decided that Virginia Avenue should henceforth be called "Vagina Avenue." My attempt to get the kids to create a Lego landscape of Moses parting the red sea (with Passover on the horizon and the feeling that we are living through the ten plagues this seemed like a good idea) ended up with Legos being thrown across the room and someone being kicked in the face. At which point my husband yelled at all of us for being too noisy while he was face-time interviewing college kids for summer internships from our home office.

The fact that his firm is still planning on summer interns gives me hope that life as we know it will, in fact go on. And I tried to explain to him that maybe if these 22 year olds hear the shit show going on in our house right now they will make sure to wrap it up during this extended spring break. It was him, after all, who made the comment the other day that quarantine would have been "a lot of fun" back before we had kids. It took me a minute to realize "a lot of fun" did not mean binge watching shows that are NOT Jessie or Bunk'd.

Props to my husband, though, for calming me down when I then had a full-on panic about keeping the kids entertained and my sanity intact and oh my god what if this goes on for a year how will we manage the kids and our sanity and what about our friends and their jobs and the whole infastructure of the United States. He let me cry on his shoulder, even though I haven't showered yet today, and told me that everything will be OK because, Math. He said that it's all about getting the data and figuring out the curves and then he totally lost me because, Math.

This might have been just his way of getting me to leave him alone so he could continue his interviews. I mean, if being married to me for almost 14 years has taught him anything it's that as soon as he starts talking about statistics he's got the room to himself because I am out of there. But the thing is, in this case, math was actually way more comforting to me than reading another WaPo article about the Spanish Flu or listening to a podcast about people dying in Italy.  His faith in numbers didn't totally bore me today, it actually comforted me. I might even go as far as to say I was a little turned on by it and had to remind myself that we are not 22 and there were three kids right outside door waiting for me to pull myself together and make them lunch.     

Here are some other things that are comforting me today that are not math or husband related:

Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu.  Even if you haven't read the book by Celeste Ng, I recommend tuning into this miniseries whose first three episodes dropped this week. It is set in Shaker Heights so all my Northeast Ohio friends will get a kick out of the references to The Plain Dealer and shopping at Weinens (I guess Heinens didn't want the free advertising). Also, it takes place in 1997
which is when I graduated from high school and the late 90's references are amazing - from the way Reese styles her hair to the TV programs the characters watch (Real World Boston!) to the music.  I never thought that the song Sex and Candy would make me happy, or that my senior year in high school - a time when I was anxious about getting into college, getting asked to prom and getting my hair to do that thing that Reese's was doing in in the first episode would be considered a stress-free time. Also, Joshua Jackson plays a dad of teens in this series.  Normally that would make me feel super old, but Pacey Whitter in tighty-whities?  YES, PLEASE.

The Holocaust. Wait, what? Yes, you read that right. It's helpful to me when I'm feeling totally out of control and panicked about the future of civilization to remind myself that people in history - some of them my actual ancestors - had it much worse. My husband's grandparents spent four years in the woods of Poland hiding from the Germans. There was no Hulu, or even heat for that matter. And even though they were childless and in their twenties, other people were literally dropping their kids off at the woods and leaving them in their care, and we all know that the only thing more annoying than our own bored and cranky kids are OTHER PEOPLE'S bored and cranky kids. Seriously, though. When I think about what it must have been like for them and for other people during that time who didn't have the luxury of just hunkering down with some books and movies but instead had to worry about ACTUAL Nazis, I calm down real quick.

Daily Show - Ears Edition. Trevor Noah is doing his show alone from his apartment and podcasting it and even when the news is....not good...something about hearing it out of his mouth is soothing.  Maybe it's the accent.

The radio. I've been playing this game with my friends for the past week where we text each other appropriate song titles for what we are going through. It started with disease-themed songs like "Harder to Breathe" and "I Will Survive" and has changed every day depending on our moods.  Lately it feels like every time I get in the car (which isn't often, since the only place I'm going is to the grocery store or for a quick drive around town just to clear my head) there is a song that I didn't know I needed to hear.  Call it divine intervention or Big Brother spying on me via Alexa, but here are some of the songs that have made me go "hmmm."

Send Me An Angel by Real Life -- both the title an the name of the artist seemed prophetic...to quote a kid on YouTube coming out of anesthesia, Is this Real Life? 

Nightmare by Halsey -- because I keep wondering when I'm gonna wake up and go "well that was WEIRD!"

This is the Time by Billy Joel -- well, we will definitely remember this time, and I'm pretty sure it will not last forever...

Blame It On The Rain by Milli Vanilli -- when you  live in Northeast Ohio, the weather is often a scapegoat.  And I'd rather blame it on the rain than China anyway.

Would I Lie To You by Charles and Eddie -- this really should be the opening music every time Trump holds a press conference.

Right Here Right Now by Jesus Jones -- I know, I'm a Jew and should not be looking to someone named Jesus for comfort, but when I'm snuggled up with my boys at night watching a movie on the couch, there really is no other place I'd rather be.