I was a little surprised how intensely people focused on fitness when this whole quarantine thing went down. Maybe because “fitness,” per se, wasn’t overly in my daily vocab before this happened. I mean I walk, I bike and occasionally go to a gym. But on top of that, we are in a crisis. My focus was on sustenance like food and how I would mentally cope, with like maybe wine. I’m an extrovert. Staying inside feels like a prison sentence to me. What activities may fuel me? Writing? Reading? Stuff like that. But when I realized how working from home basically removes any of movement at all, I figured I could try some of this so-called “fitness” out. I joined a gym down the street that was doing online classes. I finally worked up to doing a class and after 20 minutes I thought I was going to die and despised how excited the woman was about doing repetitive movements, over and over again, to terrible music. Then I obsessively walked several times a day before trying a class again. P.S. walking for me is just as much about clearing my head and listening to podcasts as it is about keeping my old creaky body moving. For the next class, I lasted another 20 minutes and realized there were muscles in my body that I just may have never ever actually worked in my life. But I get so bored with these classes. What generally ends up happening is they get me going and then I turn them off, put my wireless headphones and dance around my apartment, violently throwing myself around and singing loudly. I am performing. That, my friends, is the greatest thing we could be doing in all this. Dancing and singing at the top of our lungs around our homes. Enjoying it, letting loose. Not feeling guilty about eating or drinking or not being fit. Just be! A side note of doing some of these workout videos is that I thought I may jokingly make some super fun, body positive, dancing work out videos to inspire my Mom to dance, move and lip sync her heart out. Like uncoordinated, karaoke aerobics. Stay tuned. 

My friend called me to say she went on a walk and after her walk she tried doing one arm rotation and hurt herself and couldn’t believe how out of shape she was. I could not stop laughing. One arm rotation and she called it. Ha! I hear you sister!

I mean in all of this I have become an olympic athlete…in baking banana bread. Hot damn are my baking skills on fire right now. Cooking and baking makes me feel useful and productive and I can listen to my podcasts while I do these things, so I am basically reaching for a podium position in the next baking olympics. I am training hard. 

I am working from home full time and my significant other goes into work most of the day and works from home for several hours in the afternoon. So there are often times we are both on conference calls or phone calls. On Friday I had put my noise cancelling headphones on and was listening to Spotify and Bohemian Rhapsody came on. I decided to give it my best and really belt it out. About halfway through I took one ear bud out to check my volume and realized I had been next level yelling it out and the boy was on a business call. Weeee! You’re welcome for the free background entertainment. 

My sister texted me to say that quarantine could go on until the end of June. I told her this would cause me to become an obese alcoholic. Like similar to now I guess…but worse…?

I recently realized that I take great comfort in older Jewish men. Now that sounds super insane, but hear me out. Everyone knows that Mandy Patinkin’s beard is my safe place. He just seems to have his shit together and he is so damned trustworthy, smart and reliable. I have that same feeling when I hear Bernie Sanders. I want him to talk to me about socialism as he tucks me into bed at night. Of course, Jon Stewart is the other man who also feels extremely comforting to me. Smart, strong and funny. So when I was watching the Hilary Clinton documentary and she slammed Bernie Sanders, I felt a bit wounded. I texted my sister and I explained what she said and told her I felt the same about as Bernie as I did about Mandy. My sister let me know she heard Patinkin was a total diva to work with on set. I told her this was all too much for me because I had created this Jewish man security blanket in my head and it was BEING RUINED BY REALITY. I told her not to say anything about Jon Stewart. Please just leave him be. I can’t take anymore. 

We knew we were going to need one more Costco run before really hunkering down, pandemic style. I had been making fantasy grocery lists for weeks and going over them in my head . I was picturing how amazing it would feel when we had enough organic eggs and gluten free crackers in the house to feed a small army. We drove by Costco once last week and I was all ready to mentally go in and we saw the line a quickly drove off. Couldn’t do it. But this week we had to commit. I could not fully relax in my apartment until the freezer was packed with fudgesicles and the cupboards filled with nut butter and Made Good bars. When we pulled up today, the boy looked at the line and said no way. I knew this was our last chance, we just had to do it. We watched the line for a minute and and it seemed to move so we ran out. My list in hand, my face scarf up and my gloves on, we got our cart and lined up. I was nervous. I was nervous because it was like our last chance. We would not be coming here for a long time. We could not fuck it up. I felt like someone who had been training for an event and it was here. When we got in, I was highly focussed and on point. We stuck to the game plan. When we got to the coolers and we saw they had our eggs I yelled, this is what we have been training for! Go! Go! NOT A DRILL! I feel ridiculous that a fridge full of food makes me relax a little in all this but it does. Tonight I will sleep well. 

My constant motto these days is – what can I do right now that does not involve 

1. putting food into my mouth
2. drinking 
3. baking 
4. cooking 
5. going on my 4th OCD walk of the day?   

This is my general daily loop. Weeee!

My happy place –