Safety Not Guaranteed

I've noticed something. A reluctance, on my part.

As I walk down the hallway, many, many times each day, I pass by the bathroom. I assess my needs and keep walking. There is no reason to pee at the moment, I tell myself.

Because then I would just have to wash my hands, and my hands tend to panic at the thought. It's not pain, or even dry skin. Just the repetition. I'm not getting those 20 seconds back, you know.

I still wash my hands a lot. I've been at home forever, but I'm more paranoid now. Contracting COVID-19 over the next week aligns with possibly needing an ICU bed in May, and I'm not placing bets even with our flattened curve here in Washington (at the moment).

I began conflating a scene from Marathon Man with hand-washing a few days ago. If you know or remember the film, Laurence Olivier plays a Nazi bad guy who has training as a dentist, and he tortures poor Dustin Hoffman by poking at exposed nerves in his mouth while asking a question Hoffman has no answer for: Is it safe?

That's running through my mind, then. Me saying Is it safe? and my hands screaming in uncomprehending terror. Please don't wash me again. I'll tell you everything.

I think we can safely assume I have some exposed nerves.

I don't think I've left the house this week, although I'm a little fuzzy on the calendar currently. I don't need anything from the grocery store, although I wouldn't mind a few staples. One of the stores around here is offering to shop for us and bring the groceries out to the car, and I'm considering that as opposed to delivery. Walking inside has never bothered me; it's always been slow with few shoppers, and I've never felt threatened. I do now, a bit.

Then again, it's a different world this week. I've got a Patagonia face mask that I wear sometimes in the winter, just to keep my lower face warm outside. I dug that out the other day. It works well, I suppose. I'm just not that eager to leave.

My body aches from disuse. I'm clamping down my jaws a lot, which in turn causes my ear to get sore. I have an endless supply of movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and books to pass the time and I can't focus enough to do anything but idly scan Twitter and Facebook for jokes and new information.

I'm busy, too. Our church shut down very quickly (last service was March 8, pretty sparsely attended), and so we've been doing virtual church, a guided self-worship thing that has worked out well, surprisingly. So, my meager skills (pretty meager) with video and audio editing are useful, and I can spend hours staring at the monitor. Which doesn't help my body aches one bit.

I've made 100 cookies twice so far, so I live on sugar and white flour these days while I try to keep my appetite sane. I'd rather not get flabby and listless, but with my history I'd also rather avoid anything in the direction of losing weight. The scale seems fine. I watch. I eat cookies.

I'm engaging in long email conversations with surprising correspondents, old friends and never-met strangers who read my silly stuff. I'm grateful for this, although it adds to the jumble and the sense that I'm constantly forgetting things I need to do.

Such as, I should pay my bills. I always pay bills at the first of the month. It's already April 3 and they're just sitting there, mocking me.

Also, it's my brother's birthday. I just realized that, typing out the date. I'm not going to make it, people.

My mood is cheery, go figure. I'm mildly irritated a lot, just negotiating this space with the rest of my family, trying to give each other room to be, but it's easy to control. We're all doing the best we can. I'm still in a good mood.

I just don't want to leave the house, which I guess is good. I also don't want to pee, which is less fun, but there's a good reason for that.

And I don't think it's safe, not yet, not for a while.