RAMBLINGS FROM THE LOCKDOWN, or Emily Dickinson did it. What is it so hard for us?

Today I awoke to an email message from something called “Pelgrip” (?) which addressed me by name and offered seven suggestions of ways to avoid anxiety during social distancing. Number six is: do a little online shopping. Way ahead of you Pelgrip. My kitchen table is littered with boxes and bags of clothing/jewelry/a breadbox, and shoes that don’t fit/I didn’t like/I don’t have room for/I didn’t need in the first place. Binge-watching shows on Amazon or Netflix is suggestion number three. My husband, who will agree to watch anything if it means I will stop talking, and I are in the midst of the series “Absentia” in which a beautiful FBI agent is kidnapped for six years and returns to find her hunky husband married to someone else. On top of that indignity, she is suspected of much mayhem and has to go on the lam to clear her name. What stood out to me was the scene in which she hopped into a truck, found some random clothes, and changed into them to avoid detection. All I could think of was that, in the same situation, I would never be able to fit in any random clothes. And that brings me to another quarantine universal truth. We are told not to limit our trips to the grocery store and I can see from Facebook friends and acquaintances that some are staying away for weeks at a time. Sunday I shopped during the sacred “seniors hour” and spent several hundred dollars stockpiling food in an effort to stay home for two weeks. Today is Tuesday, and I am beginning to panic about the rapidly diminishing supply of fresh fruit, peanut M&Ms and Entenmann’s crumb-topped doughnuts. Pelgrip’s list does not address what to do when you wake in the middle of every night with a hacking cough/ suspected fever/ pressure in the chest and/or visions of sitting around in a germ-filled emergency room waiting to be told you are too old to bother with. Of course that is imaginary. Probably. To tell the truth, the only hard part of this, for someone like me, is having to stay six feet away from family and, by that, I mean seven-months-old Josie. Missing her like crazy. And our little boys in New York. On a better note, the chalk drawings made yesterday on my driveway survived this morning’s rain. I can still see “Abby” and “Molly” in big letters and just looking at them makes me happy. It’s just those doughnuts…. Stay safe and healthy, friends.