September 24, 2020
I wake up for the first time about 6:30, like I always do. I’ve only been asleep about four hours (I’m a night person), but I get up for a few minutes anyway. I stretch, drink some water. The cat thinks it’s time to eat, so I feed him and then head back to bed. I don’t have any particular reason to get up early, so I don’t bother setting an alarm.
I wake up again for good at about 11, when the cat decides he wants some attention and he rubs his face against me to get it. I let him under the covers, where he cuddles up next to my stomach and purrs, and scroll through my phone for a few minutes—a bad habit first thing after waking up, I know. I answer a couple of emails, check NPR to see in what particular ways the world is burning on September 24, 2020, then text my friend C. to wish her a happy birthday after Instagram reminds me.
A different friend sends me a message asking if I’ll be home during their lunch hour so they can come pick something up. I say yes, I’m about to get in the shower, but it’ll only take a minute. “No rush,” they say. “I’ll stop by closer to 1.”
I get up, take my meds, and hop in the shower, get dressed, brush my teeth. I still have time before my friend will be here, so I head into my office/second bedroom to get a little bit of work done. I don’t have time to get wrapped in anything too important, so I answer more emails and make my to-do list for the day. I can see the guy who mows my lawn, K., pull up in my backyard through the window. Right after him, my cell phone rings—my friend’s waiting out front.
I get the papers for my friend, who heads back to work, and spend a couple of minutes chatting with K., who doesn’t think my lawn needs to be mowed this week—he’s right, it’s not growing quickly at the moment. “I’ll be back to mow next week,” he says, and goes back to trimming the last of the hedges.
I go back to my office. I have a hard time focusing on things early in the day—my best working time seems to be after about 4pm, and thankfully my job allows for it—and I realize I haven’t eaten yet and am now starving, so I finish making my to-do list and then go in search of food. I grab a sandwich and decide to finish listening to a podcast I started yesterday for a class I’m teaching. I hop in the car, swing through the McDonald’s drive thru for an iced tea, and spend the next couple of hours listening to two episodes. While I listen, I drive around and take notes on my phone if I hear something I want to highlight with my students, take a short walk through Minnetrista, and then I go to the grocery store to get some stuff for dinner. I like going earlier in the day, or really late at night—fewer people are there than between, say, 5 and 8, so it’s a lot easier to keep my distance.
It’s not quite 3 when I get home, but I want to get dinner started because it’ll take 3-4 hours, so I start cubing chicken thighs, throwing together two different spice mixes, setting up two crockpots. I’m making chicken tikka masala in one and salsa chicken (just chicken thighs with spices and a jar of salsa—I know, thrilling) for burrito bowls in the other. I’m only cooking for me, so I like making things that are easy to freeze so I don’t have to eat the same thing every night. It takes me about 30 minutes to get them both started, and then to clean up, so I sit down at my computer just before 3:30 to get started on the bigger tasks.
I work on teaching things for a while, writing up an assignment prompt for an essay the students are going to write this next week, making a lecture video to explain a couple of concepts, a little bit of grading. I work until about 7:30 before I realize that I’m hungry and the food’s probably done.
I taste both meals and the chicken tikka masala needs more seasoning, so I mess with it, add a little bit more liquid, and turn it down to low. I’ll let it simmer for a while—it’ll be better that way anyway. I start the rice cooker, shred a little bit of cheese, mash up an avocado and season it with salt and pepper. I let the rest of the chicken—shredded now—cool while I eat.
While I’m eating, my mom calls—we haven’t talked since late last week, right before my parents went camping. She catches me up on what’s going on at home and I do the same: not much for either of us, pretty uneventful (which I guess is a good thing these days) overall. I start cleaning up while still talking to her on speaker phone, rinsing the dishes, packing up the leftovers for next week’s lunches, etc. She’s making dinner, too, and eventually needs to hang up. When I set my phone down, I see that C., the friend whose birthday is today, messaged back to say she’ll be out at the bar later—the one with plenty of room to have a beer outside while 6 feet apart, which is the only one I feel comfortable going to at the moment. I haven’t been drinking much these days, but I decide to go anyway and at least hang out for a few minutes, buy her a beer before I get back to work. I’m not sure if she’ll be there yet, but I figure it’s worth a try.
When I get to the bar, C.’s not there, but some other friends are, so I sit down on a bench in the alley a few feet away from them and we talk for a bit about our days. There’s a dress rehearsal for a Civic Theater fundraiser down at the Commons, which we can hear from where we are, so I walk over to check it out for a few minutes. I take a walk around downtown for a little bit, enjoying the nice weather. C. messages again to say she’s still at dinner, probably won’t be there until after 10. It’s only 9:15. I head back to the bar, pre-pay the bartender (a mutual friend) for her first beer, and then head back home.
I get back to grading, trying to finish up one full assignment before I move on to the next thing on my to-do list. I get close by about 10:30, but then I take a short break to grab some water from the kitchen, to package up the chicken tikka masala that’s finally done and clean up a little bit, and go check on the laundry. While cleaning up, I get an idea for something I’ve been writing, so after restarting the dryer and getting back to my office, I open up the Word document I’ve been staring at with no luck for three nights in a row and start typing.
I finish up my work a little after 1, grab a snack, get ready for bed, and watch a little TV before falling asleep.