Approximately a half hour after eating lunch, Bill chews a piece of gum. I know this because we watch a mid-day news report every day after lunch, and midway through I hear a rumple of tiny paper to my right.
In an effort to place an order for groceries and grab a delivery time, I repeatedly hit this trio of buttons, “Checkout,” “Continue,” then “Cancel,” as if I’m trying to win concert tickets from a radio station.
I put laundry detergent into the washer for an extra-large warm load of whites and let the water run a bit to get the soap mixed in. An hour later, I found one pair of underwear spun and stuck to the wall of the basin. Distractions still exist in this timelessness.
I woke up at 3:30 Saturday morning, grabbed my phone, and on the first try, nabbed the last grocery delivery slot two weeks out.
At 9:40 I woke up the second time that morning and thought I had just enough time to put clothes on and fix my hair for a church Zoom meeting at 10:00 that would be followed by an 11:00 Zoom meeting with friends. I told Bill my plans; he said, “You’re going to church on Saturday?”
I looked at the calendar to confirm the date in my own head. That grid on paper was useless, for I didn’t know the day of the week nor the number associated with it—or if I had crossed out the day before such that “today” was the number to the right of the that one with a slash through it.
I find few absolute deadlines. I see how I rely on those in normal times. How comforting they are. How people let them slide now; after all, we have an abundance of timeless time.
I have two games stacked on the TV stand/side table next to the couch in the basement, Risk and Jeopardy. I’ve never played either of them, but stacked on top of one another, they are the perfect height to get my head and shoulders into the Zoom screen. I also need the red-handled, flat head screwdriver on the other side table: with the handle end wedged behind my iPad, it pushes the screen to the right angle such that Zoom buddies are not staring up my nostrils.
At dinner, I tell my family that I do not want to go grocery shopping for a couple weeks—but that we have plenty of food. Only that you might not have your favorite what-cha-ma-call-it every day. I online-shopped Goldfish crackers and eggs with wild abandon. Those dozens will be bartering items for toilet paper in four weeks’ time.
I found “Aerial America” on the Smithsonian Channel. I’ve flown over Iowa and Wisconsin in the last 48 hours. With ten loads of laundry to sort laid out on my bed yesterday afternoon, I discovered that the first Muslim mosque in the United States was built in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and that the earthy smells emanating from that city are from Quaker Oats and General Mills. I can smell the Cheerios baking now.
I know that every piece of clean laundry will fit in my closet but only if I have one season’s clothes out at a time. Warm jeans and long-sleeved shirts are now packed away.
Vitamin D is becoming more available naturally. Despite the temperature, a half hour facing this higher sun, even with a coat on and a blanket wrapped around me, feels delicious.
Zoom meeting screens can slip behind the open website screen. I heard a man’s voice utter a couple words when I was alone in the kitchen last Sunday around 5:30 p.m. I ignored it as one does the occasional random voice in one’s head. Near 6 p.m., a woman’s voice said, “Linda, are you here?” I had tested getting into this host person’s Zoom meeting a half hour early. However, after successfully logging in, rather than closing Zoom, I had somehow just hidden the open meeting behind my website screen, and the host, this woman’s husband, had also come in about a half hour early.
I now know to “Leave Meeting” and to close the Zoom application if I have no intentions of surprise visitors in my kitchen. Or in my head.