Pandemic Dispatches: Surreal World

Nobody told me there'd be days like these.

Strange days indeed.

-John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"

In a normal timeline, I would have spent the past several days largely in front of a television for the first rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, worried about little besides upsets, buzzer beaters, and brackets. In fact, the last real day of normalcy for me was Sunday, March 8—Brandi and I went out for lunch and a beer, and as we sat at the bar, we talked about our plans to go to Cleveland the following Saturday to see the BGSU men's basketball team play in the MAC championship game, should they make it far, and about where we would go to watch the Reds play on Opening Day. Within a few days, the MAC tournament had been canceled, followed closely by the NCAA tournament and the postponement of baseball's opening day.

I have to qualify that as my last "real" day of normalcy, because...well, look. I've been working primarily from home since 2007, and Brandi and I have homebody tendencies. Our evenings (and not uncommonly our weekends) usually consist of ordering takeout and catching up on old episodes of Star Trek on Netflix. Practically speaking, my life hasn't changed all that much.

But in small, subtle ways it has. I was working on establishing a regular gym habit after work, but now the gym is closed for who knows how long (officially through April 5, but LOL). On Saturdays, I like to walk to the library and spend a few hours there. Now the libraries are closed; instead I've been walking to the library and immediately back to just spend a few hours in my home office instead. Hell, I can't even get a haircut, and I'm getting to the point where I could really use one (if this goes on for very long, my hair situation is going to get very interesting).

I'm lucky, though. Brandi and I both are. Our places of employment (including my "side hustle") are still operating, so we're still working our regular hours and earning our paychecks. Her company, at least the department she works in, is primarily work from home for everyone. I was my company's only full-time remote employee, but the departments who can have shifted my colleagues to working from home. I'm interested to see how that is received, both by my newly remote co-workers and by the company itself. It could be quite a culture shock, hopefully in a good way.

And still that's much that's surreal about this whole situation. Seeing our condo complex parking lot full of cars during the day, when it's normally empty (other than our cars), is one. I'm walking a lot now—with the gym closed, it's the only way to exercise, really—and seeing so many cars parked throughout our neighborhood, and hearing how quiet it is, is another. Rush hour traffic is one of the very few things I dislike about Worthington and Columbus in general, and man, right now it's nonexistent. Not that there's anywhere to go. And that's another thing—homebody aside, during my wanderings, I like to pop into the corner pub for a happy hour libation or two, and now it's dark, and empty, and closed. I'm very much looking forward to doing that again once this is all over, if I can—I fear the landscape may have changed by that time, especially where small businesses are concerned.

Also. I went to the grocery store one day last week to pick up a few essentials. It was so close to being a regular grocery run. So much of the store was at regular stock levels. But soup? Pasta? Bread? Milk? Empty, or at least extremely picked over. (The only Campbell's Soup flavor available, for example, was Spicy Chicken Quesadilla; if you wanted Progressive, you could have whatever you wanted.) I didn't even bother to look for toilet paper—Brandi is...not a hoarder, exactly, but...a toilet paper enthusiast even in normal times, so we're in good shape for a while in that department. I have to say, the toilet paper thing has me utterly baffled. This is not a virus that attacks the digestive system, so I'm not sure why that's the item no one can keep in stock. I'm hopeful that the panic will wear off and more or less normal availability will resume by the time we're in need, which, thankfully, is a week or two away.

I wrote earlier that Brandi and I are lucky in terms of our jobs continuing. We know plenty of bartenders, servers, and others whose jobs have shut down completely. That's kind of my worst nightmare, to be honest. Although both of our jobs are still in progress and appear to be stable for the time being, I've been preparing for the worst, in kind of a low-key way. We both received our annual bonuses shortly before this began; we had plans for that money, but instead I just socked it all away in savings, just in case either or both of our jobs are interrupted at some point. And we're lucky because we have that luxury, and because we're, for the most part, not living paycheck to paycheck. We've fought really hard to get to that point, and I really feel for people who aren't there, whose jobs took an abrupt and indefinite hiatus or may do so at any day, who don't know how they're going to pay their rent or their bills. I understand that evictions and utility shutoffs have been paused, more or less, but those bills are going to come due at some point, and that still doesn't help with things like groceries. So yes, I feel incredibly lucky to be in the position we're in.

Seasons don't fear the reaper.

Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain.

We can be like they are.

- Blue Oyster Cult, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper"