Month: March 2020

Mascara, Food and H20: Quarantine Necessities

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This quarantine feels like a supernova pharmaceutical speedball of sedatives, uppers, and Midol. I’m jumpy from the lack of activities, then drowsy by how overwhelming it all is – often while battling a small headache. I waver between relishing being home and panicking that if this continues, I won’t have a home.

It’s not the solitude, I’m at home with five people, it’s the freaky germ awareness. I’m a messy person and I’m now cleaning with no real purpose or mission. I don’t know how to clean. I think cleaning is something you’re taught, and I never got around to that lesson in childhood, I was too busy writing love notes to Prince. Sure I can clean surfaces but scrubbing floors and toilets has always been for a biweekly housekeeper. Now it’s my job and I’m remarkably bad at it.

But hey, on the verge of the apocalypse, who cares how clean or dirty my house has been? This is the first time I’ve been home and not working in over a decade. It’s refreshing and foreign. It’s also given me a lot of time to obsess over a few thangs.

Out, damn spot.

Mascara is a Dear Friend

The world can take away the restaurants, libraries, and malls but I will stab someone with my L’Oreal wand before they take away my extra-black mascara. As my deodorant application becomes infrequent and my eyeliner has disappeared from my droopy eyelids, my mascara is applied with a heavy hand!

Perhaps I’m a thinker, not a doer.

All this time has given me so many ideas! Register for an online course, brush up on my Spanish, explore Scientology. But what I truly want to do is watch “Little Fires Everywhere,” every episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Mindhunter.” I’ve polished off more books than I can remember and haven’t gotten to that online course yet.

Fancy Frocks Get You Nowhere

Feel low? Buy a dress. Celebrating a milestone? Fetch a froufrou frock.

Dress adornment has gotten me through the highs and lows of life but wowza, all those dresses are of no use to me right now. My knowledge of chiffon, silk blends and how to iron linen is useless. You know what I need more of? Sweatpants! I’ve been alternating between two pairs for weeks.

Things I don’t Care about Anymore

The fight nobody cares about. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images for NARAS)

I’m DESPERATE for a celebrity scandal but not the day-old donuts Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift reignited rift. Yawn. Who still cares what zonked-out Kanye West said in a 2016 rap song NOBODY heard?

Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom are having a baby. Who cares? Their parents and that’s about it.

Remember the college admissions scandal? It feels pretty silly to whine about the wealthy getting their kids into college while we can now complain about the privileged getting coronavirus tests WAY before the peons. Disappointing? Sure, but surprising? Come on.

Gal Godot embarrassed herself and all her celebrity pals with this literally tone-deaf “Imagine” cover. I haven’t watched anything this bad since I slogged through the first four minutes of this season’s “This Is Us.” Gadot should fire her inner voice and her celebrity pals should just fire her.

When in doubt, go to Beck.

COVID-19, Shopping, and an Inability to Act in a Crisis

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I’m extra twitchy.

Sure, I do dwell in a perpetual state of anxiety and weirdness but be forewarned, I’m acting much crazier than usual. COVID-19, coupled with my total inability to handle a crisis, has me shopping like Celine Dion and sweating like Amanda Bynes’s parents on visitor’s day.

My list of neurosis is as robust as my closet and hovering close to the top is a whammy: In a catastrophe, I’m immobilized by fear and can’t do anything other than shop, obsess and read.

White ceilings, bright overhead lights. Finally, I’m home.

Since my completely-sober Corona blackout, I’ve purchased a new wardrobe and polished off a book every other day. I don’t even know what the books have been about, I just read them until I can sleep.

Want to know what I haven’t done? Stocked up on necessities, contacted my doctor about doubling prescriptions, or sanitized my house. I’ve burrowed myself deep into a K-hole of inactivity and dealt with my fear by analyzing every word of The Weeknd’s creepy new masterpiece, shielding my eyes while watching HBO’s “The Outsider”, and wondering what Fiona Apple is doing. It’s all I know how to do.

Does Beck have a pre-existing condition? Will he be okay?

This behavior goes way back. Fresh from college, I drove across country with a male pal to move to Portland, Oregon. I had no reason to do this, no plan when I got there, and no thoughts on returning. My parents were on my back about getting a job with insurance and I just wanted to party, stalk Elliott Smith and get away from a pretentious manchild I’d been obsessing over for years.

So, to prepare for this ridiculous journey, I slept. I slept like I’d never slept before. I slept right until it was time to say my “goodbyes” and climbed into a car to travel 3,000 miles to party and stalk a new manchild. I can’t remember if I ever even wanted to go to Portland, I just didn’t know how to get out of it.

Portland-bound without a plan.

You know that part in a movie, right before someone delivers horrible news and they say, “Do you want to sit down?” That question is for people like me. People who get woozy at bad news and faint in times of turmoil. Don’t count on me in an emergency.

Some may blame it one laziness, but I think not. I’m not lazy, just crazy. I can’t even deal with this coronavirus stress by overeating because my inability to act landed me right into obesity and now I’m intermittent fasting like a millennial.

Can’t Kit-Kat may way out of this one.

For years I lived without a scale and with a false sense of comfort that I wasn’t THAT fat. Heck, I’d had three kids and could still wear all my ethereal tent dresses —how chubby could I be?

Because I also have a deep fear of doctors, I rarely had to step on a scale, and I enjoyed my make-believe land of thinness and health. But a nasty sickness landed me in the emergency room with a DEMAND that I get a doctor and lose weight. Yup, I knew I was getting fat, but I combated the problem by never stepping on a scale or going to a doctor. PERFECTO!

So, I’m going to fight Corona with everything I have: impressive clothing, an expert’s knowledge on The Weeknd, and a hunger for food after 6 p.m.

See you in the bunker! I’ll be the really well dressed hungry woman.