When we arrived at our rental home, we saw 2 small islands that looked to be a reasonable paddling distance. We checked the tide schedule. This was the very first lesson we learned the hard way. Low tide is really, really low. It is so low that unsuspecting, inexperienced idiots in a kayak might get wedged into thick, sucking mud akin to quicksand. To be fair, even high tide isn’t all that high. Some spots are only 2 feet deep.
I thought the challenging part of this adventure would be lowering the boats into the water from the dock and then getting into the kayak from a ladder. I’ve only done this once before. The amount of flexibility I displayed to keep one leg on the ladder and one leg in a boat drifting away from the ladder was impressive, but I would not have won any awards for grace or athleticism. I’m six years older since my first and only ladder entry. I was pleasantly surprised when I climbed down the ladder, leaned back and my butt made contact with a dry seat instead of warm water.
With the most difficult portion of this expedition successfully executed, I set off for Out Key. I scanned the horizon for dolphin fins. Cormorants and pelicans flew just above the gentle waves. The sky was bright blue. The water was sparkling. The only sound I heard was my paddling…dip, drip, dip, drip. It was hypnotic and relaxing.
Halfway to my destination, my reverie shattered when something suddenly slammed into my right forearm. I felt several hard slaps and screamed, “What the fuck was that?!” Did a low flying bird dive bomb me? I spun my head in the direction of the impact and saw nothing. Then, I felt another forceful slap on my thigh. My head whipped around. I still didn’t see anything, but I did hear a splash on the other side of my boat.
Hearing my expletive laced scream, Oregano paddled quickly in my direction
“Are you OK? What happened?” he asked, looking around at the calm blue water to see what could have startled me so much. Nothing was amiss.
“I think I was broadsided by a fish!” I was flabbergasted at this realization. How could this have happened again?
“I think you are right,” he admitted.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked.
“No, but there is evidence,” he said.
“Evidence?! What do you mean?” I looked around to see if there was a dead fish floating nearby.
“Hold up your arm,” he said pointing his camera at me. “You’re going to want this for the blog.”
“What do you mean? I already wrote a blog post about accidentally sitting on a guppy that jumped into my kayak. No one is going to believe I had another close encounter with a fish.”
“Trust me,” he said, handing his phone over. “People will believe you.” I looked down at the screen. There, on my arm, was a red, fish shaped welt!
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything. I got busy with life in retirement and felt like I didn’t have much blog fodder. The universe, in its inimitable wisdom, saw fit to provide me with material too ripe not to share. As a matter of fact, the universe wasn’t subtle about it. The material, quite literally, landed in my lap.
Oregano and I love to kayak. Over the years, we have taken the opportunity to do so whenever we travel, but we’ve never been able to go for a paddle near our home. Transporting and storing kayaks has always been the barrier until a friend told us about modular kayaks. These are kayaks that come in pieces that nest inside each other, but can be snapped together to form a 14 foot hard shell kayak.
Transportation and storage issues solved, we can now explore paddling opportunities nearby with our friends, Matzah and Gefilte. They have experience kayaking in New Jersey and we have had fun exploring local options with them. They introduced us to the beautiful Splitrock Reservoir. The steep sides make it difficult to launch a boat unless your plan is to get in at the top of the hill and sled down through the trees until you hit the water. Thankfully that’s not necessary because there is a floating dock and a chute. You load the kayak into the chute. This keeps it stable and makes it easier to get in. Then you pull yourself along using the paddle notches until you float onto the water and can paddle away.
The floating dock and launch chute at Split Rock Reservoir.
On a beautiful summer day, Matzah, Gefilte, Oregano and I had been paddling at Splitrock for a few hours when we started to head back towards the launch site. While exploring one last cove, I felt something wet hit my right hip. We were in a shallow, grassy area of the reservoir. Sometimes, when there is a lot of seaweed or underwater grass, you can hook a piece on your paddle and it slides down into the boat. Not a big deal…usually.
I reached down to my hip expecting to feel a piece of stringy, wet grass. Imagine my surprise when what I touched did not feel grasslike at all. In fact, it felt slimy and I thought I felt it wriggle. Surely, I had imagined that it moved on its own. Grass is inanimate. The movement I felt must have been it slipping further into the boat. I reached my hand down again. This time I was sure that whatever I had touched moved of its own accord. This was not a happy discovery.
I yelled over to Oregano and Matzah, “There’s something in the boat with me!”
My loving husband’s response, “I’m sure it’s just grass.”
“Nope! Definitely not grass. Last time I checked, grass doesn’t move by itself,” I replied.
Matzah suggested, “There are a lot of dragonflies. Maybe it’s just one of them.” While I appreciated his effort, I was convinced a dragonfly would not feel slimy.
“Do you want me to paddle over to you and try to get whatever it is out of your boat?” Oregano offered.
“Yes! Hurry!” I didn’t know what the fuck was in the boat with me, but I knew that boat wasn’t big enough for the two of us to peacefully coexist.
Oregano paddled up alongside me and reached his hand between my hip and the wall of my boat. I could feel his hand and see his face. The expression on his face changed instantly. What started out as a face best described as, “she’s overreacting”, quickly drained to a face of “holy shit, what is that?” He yanked his hand out of my boat. It was empty!
“What was it? Why is your hand empty? What the Hell did you feel to make you yank your hand back so quickly?” I fired questions at him. Clearly I was doing a poor job of trying to calm the panic that was building.
“I don’t know, but it is definitely alive! I couldn’t grab it. It moved away,” was his reply as he pushed away from my kayak and started paddling off.
“Where are you going? There is something alive in the kayak WITH YOUR WIFE!” The panic had clearly set in now. Was it a fish? A snake? The Loch Ness monster’s smaller, American cousin?
It was clear that Oregano and Matzah were going to be of no use to me at this point. My only option was to get out of the boat as fast as possible. Jumping into the water seemed like a foolish choice, so I planted my feet on the foot pegs. I braced my knees against the side of the cockpit and hovered above the seat to give myself as much real estate as possible between me and the unidentified stowaway. Once in position, I started paddling like I was in a race for an Olympic gold medal.
All I could focus on was the chute on the floating dock. I needed to hit it straight on so that I could pull myself out as quickly as possible. I was coming in hot.
Gefilte was on the dock having missed all the excitement. He had pulled his kayak out of the chute and was putting down his paddles when he offered, “Wait. Let me help you.”
“There’s something alive in the boat with me! I need to get out of this thing as fast as I can,” I said while hauling my boat out of the water using the paddle notches and flinging myself onto the floating dock.
“Really? What’s in the boat with you?” Gefilte asked with great curiosity.
“I have no idea,” I said, breathless from my efforts.
Gefilte peeked into the boat that I had abandoned in the chute. “It’s a fish. It’s dead now. It appears you sat on it and squashed it.”
That was it! I began flailing my arms while pacing around the dock. Fish freak me out! I have an agreement with all living marine life. I don’t swim in natural bodies of water and disturb them and they agree to leave me alone when I float on top of the water in a boat. Clearly, this fish had not gotten the memo.
Gefilte reached into my kayak and retrieved the flattened fish as Matzah and Oregano took turns pulling up onto the chute on the other side of the dock.
Gefilte asked me if I wanted to see the stowaway. I did not. Matzah and Oregano did. Boys!
They all started howling with laughter.
“What? What kind of fish is it?” I asked, still not looking at Gefilte’s hand.
“I don’t know, so let’s just call it a silver backed ass fish,” Gefilte suggested. They snapped a commemorative photo then provided the dearly departed with a burial at sea.
“How big was it?” I asked when I eventually calmed down. I wasn’t sure if I was more upset about the fish being in my boat or the idea that I sat on it and killed it.
“About the size of your pinky,” Oregano snickered. “It was like a minnow or a guppy.”
We were in a 650 acre reservoir. There were 4 of us together. Out of all that space, why did this tiny fish decide my boat was the one to jump into? Sometimes there are questions for which there are no answers.
The recently deceased stowaway.
When we reached the parking lot to disassemble the boats, I noticed the silver fish scales on my kayak’s seat; the scene of the murder. I tentatively looked at the corresponding spot on my butt. Yep. There were silver scales on my shorts. Ewwwww!
When we got home, I immediately tossed my scaly shorts in the washer and my body in the shower. As I was scrubbing and scrubbing, an idea came to me. My kayak didn’t have a name; neither of our boats did. We couldn’t think of names when we got them in May and figured a name would present itself eventually. It had.
The mental image of me sitting on this tiny fish still fresh in my mind, I went onto Etsy to look for someone who could make a name sticker for my boat.
Oregano saw me. “What are you working on?” he asked.
“Thanks to today’s events, I’ve come up with a name for my boat,” I replied.
“Really? What is it?” he asked.
“The Guppy,” I said, turning the screen to show him the image.
“That’s perfect! My kayak still doesn’t have a name though,” he said forlornly.
“I’ve come up with a name for your boat, but I don’t think you’re going to like it,” I replied.
“Really? You thought of a name?” he seemed excited.
“Yes. I think we should christen your boat the SS Unchivalrous.” Oregano shook his head and walked away.
Fall is in full swing. Gone are the sauna-like bad hair days of summer. As a reward for enduring the heat and humidity of summer, we get to enjoy crisp, chilly mornings followed by warm afternoons. Instead of sweating through my daily walk where I count the steps until I reach the next patch of shade, now I stomp and crunch leaves underfoot while colorful leaves twirl down around me like Mother Nature’s confetti. The cooler weather also means it is time for seasonal treats like apple cider doughnuts and my favorite type of apple, Macouns.
On a rainy day, I was out running an errand when I realized a 10 minute detour would take me to the farmstand that sells both my favorite doughnut and apple. Life is all about balance. The farm usually sells out of their doughnuts by late morning, but since it was mid-week, I figured I had a good chance of scoring some despite it being 11am.
As soon as I got out of my car, I could see the cider doughnuts piled high on the table. Woohoo!! Thanks to Co-Vid, gone are the days of using a communal pair of tongs to select individual doughnuts. They are now packaged 6 to a container. Oh, the sacrifices we have all had to make because of the virus! Doughnuts acquired, I began wandering amongst the huge variety of apples looking for the Macouns. In my search, I came across a small green basket filled with knobby, dirt-speckled, brown roots. Ginger! I grabbed a piece the size of my thumb so I could use it to make some tea to go along with my doughnut. Right next to the ginger, I found a bushel full of Macouns. I selected a few apples and practically skipped to the counter with my bounty of fall treats. It was going to be a good afternoon despite the chilly rain!
When I arrived home, I called up to Oregano working in the office and told him that I had a surprise for him when he was ready for his snack break. A half hour later, a very long half hour during which I stared longingly at, but did not eat the cider doughnuts, Oregano came downstairs to claim his surprise.
I was sitting on the couch in the living room distracting myself from the doughnuts by writing an email when I heard him say, “This is quite a haul! Cider doughnuts and Macouns! But, why did you buy a single tiny potato?”
“I didn’t buy a potato. That’s a piece of ginger,” I looked up to find him holding the ginger in his hand turning it around and examining it like it was a piece of evidence.
“No. I think this is one of those fingerling potatoes. It really looks like a potato,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure it is ginger. It was in a basket full of other small, brown knobby pieces just like that,” I replied.
“You mean a basket of other small, brown potatoes,” he smirked, put the potato down and picked up a doughnut.
With lips covered in cinnamon powdered sugar we debated the characteristics of potatoes versus ginger.
Doughnut consumed, I said, “There is an easy way to get to the root of this problem. All we need to do is scratch the skin. Ginger is very aromatic. If it is ginger, it will be obvious.”
Oregano grabbed the questionable root, scratched off a piece of skin, took a whiff and handed it to me, “It’s a potato,” he said matter of factly.
I held it up to my nose and discerned that it was indeed a potato. I laughed so loud and so hard, I startled all three cats from their naps.
“I guess, now that it is isolated from the other brown, knobby roots, it does look more potato-like,” I admitted sheepishly.
“It is not potato-like,” said Oregano savoring his victory, “It IS a potato.”
I started giggling uncontrollably again, “What do you think the farmer thought when I showed up at the counter with 6 doughnuts, 4 apples and 1 very small potato?” I mused aloud. “I wonder why he didn’t say anything.”
“What would he say? I’m sure he has seen crazier purchases. The better question is what are you going to do with that tiny potato? It’s not like we can share it,” he said.
“That’s easy. I’ll make myself the smallest batch of home fries ever for breakfast tomorrow morning!”
Hash browns enlarged, not to show texture, but because it was a such a pitifully small pile.
I suck at hiking. I know what you’re thinking. Hiking is just walking in the woods. How much harder can it be than regular walking? For me, it is fraught with potential injury inducing opportunities and an assortment of insect bites. With a long standing record of injuring myself doing mundane household activities, doing a mundane activity in a natural setting only ups the ante on the risk factor. I’ve tried hiking in some spectacular locations: Glacier National Park in Montana, Waimea Canyon in Hawaii, The Alps in Switzerland. Hiking while surrounded by those stunning vistas was completely lost on me. I spent so much time concentrating on where I was putting my feet that I never looked up from the ground. I might as well have been hiking in an aisle in Target.
Oregano knows of my dislike of hiking so he was a bit surprised when I suggested we go hiking at a park in Pennsylvania as a way to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.
“Why would you want to spend our anniversary doing that?” he wondered.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures. We can’t go on the celebratory vacation we planned or to a show or even out to eat. It was time to think outside the box or just think outside.” I replied.
“OK. If you are sure you want to hike, I’ll take the day off from work,” he agreed.
“It’s supposed to be an easy hike, so I should be fine as long as I slather on the bug spray and walk carefully,” I said attempting to muster enthusiasm for the loathsome undertaking.
The day before our anniversary outing, I took hammers out of the garage and put them by the front door.
That evening Oregano noticed them, “Why are those hammers there?”
“We’ll need them for our walk in the woods and I don’t want to forget them,” I said cheerfully.
“Hmmm… hammers on a hike? That’s weird. I can’t imagine where we are going that we’ll need hammers in the woods,” he wondered as he headed up the stairs.
“I admire your confidence in our relationship,” I said.
He stopped and turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, your wife, who hates to hike, invited you on a hike in the woods and is packing hammers and you aren’t the least bit suspicious. We’ve been trapped at home together for the past four months, a man less sure of his relationship might be concerned about being taken on a journey to an undisclosed, remote location with a bag full of potential weapons.” I said with a slightly evil smirk on my face.
He shook his head, laughed and continued up the stairs.
“Don’t try Googling hiking with hammers in Pennsylvania,” I warned as he hit the top step.
Thankfully, the day of our anniversary was not blazing hot so we grabbed our backpack loaded with bug spray, water bottles and what may or may not be key pieces of evidence in an upcoming murder trial and headed across the border to Pennsylvania. It was a beautiful ride through bucolic scenery.
During the ride, Oregano’s curiosity reawakened and he mused about why we might need hammers. When we turned on to Ringing Rocks Road, he commented on the unusual street name and then a light bulb started to flicker above his head. “I wonder if that is a clue to where we are going.”
“It might be,” I said as we turned into the parking lot for Ringing Rocks State Park.
When we got out, I swung the backpack over my shoulder causing the hammers to clang against the can of bug spray. Oregano offered to carry the bag, but I said I could manage then made an ominous laugh.
It was a blissfully flat trail. We passed a few other socially distant hikers, all carrying hammers. I’m not sure, but Oregano seemed slightly relieved to realize I wasn’t the only one with hammers. After a few minutes, a strange sound began emerging from the left side of the trail. It wasn’t the buzz of insects or the chirps of birds. These were not sounds you’d expect to hear in the middle of the woods. It was either an oddly located blacksmith’s shop or some very large bells.
We walked down the path towards the noise and found a huge field strewn with boulders. Carefully, we began to pick our way over and around the boulders nimbly avoiding the poison ivy growing between them. My first thought after scrambling up and over a few rows of rocks was that this would be a great place for an orthopedist to set up shop. I was envisioning an ice cream truck tricked out with a portable x-ray machine. The doctor could even play music to help the unfortunate people in need of medical assistance locate the mobile office in the woods. As I scrambled around ungracefully on all fours, I wondered which of my limbs I was going to break first. Always the optimist, I realized that at least we’d be able to use the hammer handles as a makeshift splint until we could get me back out across the boulders.
This looks like an easy stroll, doesn’t it?
While I was navigating this natural obstacle course, I could hear the clanging cacophony created by the other hammer wielding hikers. These people clearly had better balance or were direct descendants of mountain goats because they had made it to the far side of the field of boulders. A wide-eyed Oregano took the hammer I managed to extract from the backpack and started banging out tunes on any rock he could reach. Some rocks had deep sounds like a bell, others sounded like someone dropped change on a concrete floor and some were just duds.
“How on Earth did you know about this?” he asked me while swinging his hammer.
“During my pandemic purge, I came across an article I saved from 2007 about this park. I did some research and thought it would be a fun surprise for you. It only took 13 years and no other available options to move this attraction to the top of our places to see list.”
This will be my last Chronicles of a Corona Captive post. Most of us are slowly starting to emerge back into the world again. Now, we are more like Corona Parolees. Thank you for helping me get through this quarantine. What I thought would be a 2 week writing project to keep my mind occupied, force me to focus on the funny and help alleviate my own anxiety has lasted more than 2 months. I can’t believe you stuck around to read it the whole time! Maybe I do better maintaining readers when their other options for entertainment are extremely limited. You have made this quarantine bearable and, aside from the fear of contracting a potentially life-threatening illness, you’ve made it fun. I can’t thank you enough for that.
I’m going to take a short break from writing while I finish up the school year and sleep outside the hair salon waiting for an appointment. You helped me rediscover my joy of writing, so I promise I’ll be back during the summer with more misadventures. I hope you’ll come back to read and comment. Until then, stay safe and be well.
Can’t stop baking…can’t stop baking…can’t stop baking…I had to bake for Oregano’s birthday, but apparently those Thin Mint cupcakes unleashed the vanilla scented beast I had been fighting so hard to contain. In one week, I made the aforementioned cupcakes, dill pickle bread and a tropical banana bread with coconut and pineapple. Friends who knew the baking beast was running rampant in my kitchen volunteered to do drive-by pick-ups of my baked goods. I’m not sure if that speaks to the quality of my baking skills or the fact that they are desperate to get out of the house. Either way, I have found a solution to my craving for baking and my aversion to the calories that result from consumption of the finished product. I’m calling it the Paprika Furstenburg Calorie Distribution Program.
Our governor is talking about reopening beaches for Memorial Day weekend. I can only imagine the tan lines the masks will leave.
One of the good things about being stuck at home is that there is now time to stop and smell the roses. Well, the roses aren’t blooming here yet, but I have been able to watch birds. I’ve gotten a front row seat to watch blue buntings and woodpeckers feeding their babies.
Oregano needed another haircut. This is the third time. You’d think I’d be getting the hang of it by now, but I am actually getting worse. After this attempt, his hair is lumpy and uneven, or as I referred to it…wavy. It’s quite a look. Now the poor guy will have to wear a mask AND a hat when he leaves the house.
My hair, on the other hand, has not been cut. I put on my sunglasses the other day and noticed a striking resemblance to Cousin It from The Addams Family TV show from the 1960s.
All I am missing is the hat.
This pandemic has made me realize that we have been reduced to a more primitive version of ourselves: hunter gatherers. As is traditional, I have become the gatherer of our family spending an hour a day scouring the internet for hand sanitizer, wipes and any other products we need, but can’t find. Oregano hunts in the grocery store every week and comes home with his bounty.
My gathering skills might need some honing though. I finally found hand sanitizer spray online. The fine print said it was made with 70% alcohol and an essential oil blend called “dragon’s breath.” You’d think that a name like that would have scared me off, but hand sanitizer is hard to come by these days and even harder to have delivered to your door. I did my due diligence and looked up the components of dragon’s breath blend. It seemed harmless enough: lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus, peppermint, oregano and clove. The hand sanitizer arrived (all 5 bottles of it) and let me tell you, dragon’s breath blend is aptly named. I don’t know who got close enough to determine the exact chemical make-up of a dragon’s breath, but I dare say they nailed it with this combination! Yikes! I have no idea how effective the hand sanitizing properties of this mixture are, but I do know that spraying this on our hands will certainly make it easier for people to keep an appropriate amount of distance between us and them.
The governor of New Jersey has officially closed school buildings for the rest of the academic year. I didn’t realize when I submitted my retirement papers back in December, that I’d get a 90 day trial period to sample some of the finer aspects of retirement like sleeping past 5:30am, going to the bathroom at will and working in a room that has windows. That said, the thought of another 6 weeks of remote learning is daunting.
The Mystery of the Missing Thin Mints… I made an experimental batch of mint chocolate cupcakes for Oregano’s birthday. The sacrificial test cupcake was a slam dunk so I was cleared to proceed to phase 2 – frosting. I waited until Oregano was out at the grocery store then I prepared the frosting, removed a dozen Thin Mints from their top-secret location and decorated every cupcake with a cookie. If I hadn’t kept them safely hidden, he would have eaten them all and had none left for his birthday. I’m nothing if not a benevolent bitch.
After 2 months of being homebound, I finally left the house! We were out together for 2 whole hours. When we got home, the cats gave us a “Where the hell have you been?” look.
My big outing was to visit nurseries in search of plants for the garden. Since we were outdoors and wearing masks, we figured this was a relatively safe way for me to venture out. I don’t really mind the mask and after a few minutes I forgot I even had it on. As I walked through the aisles, I saw a lilac bush. I love the smell of lilacs, but despite my green thumb, I cannot grow them. Any chance I get, I try to steal a whiff of them. When I bent down to sniff the blossoms, I was disappointed that they were not fragrant. His voice muffled by the mask, I heard Oregano suggest that I remove my mask and sniff again.
I realized that masks serve another purpose besides protecting us from the virus. Almost everyone’s hair is in the process of returning to its au natural state. Wearing a mask hides your identity until the salons reopen. Bonus, no need to wear make-up either.
When we got in the car to leave the nursery, Oregano noticed a woman in the parking lot loading plants into her trunk. He said, “Hey, she looks like she’s had a haircut! How did she do that?” I looked up startled at his outburst. I’m not sure what I found more surprising; the woman who had a very stylish, very short haircut or the fact that Oregano noticed she had her hair cut. He never notices when I get a haircut. We spent the 15 minute drive to the next nursery coming up with scenarios that would have explained how she was able to get a haircut. You wouldn’t think someone else’s hair could generate that much conversation, but it did. This is the world we live in now.
When we stopped at a light on our ride home from our excursion, Oregano looked lovingly at me and told me I looked adorable in my mask. It was very sweet. What was my appreciative reply to this compliment? “So, are you saying I look better with half my face covered?” Speechless by my response, Oregano chuckled, shook his head and pulled away when the light turned green. Tender marital moment over.
The weather is finally warming up and I can start working in the garden. At the beginning of April, I ordered several bags of soil from Miracle Gro, but, after 3 weeks, it still hadn’t arrived. I checked my confirmation email and shared my concerns with Oregano. That was the wrong thing to do. It unleashed a torrent of gardening and soil related puns. I will share them with you so that you can have a better understanding of what my quarantine experience has been like.
“It’s a dirty trick that they haven’t shipped that yet.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure the soil has already left the plant.”
“I have growing concerns that your dirt won’t arrive.”
“Maybe the soil was delivered, but stolen. No one was guardin’ the door.”
“You’ll be so excited when it arrives, you’ll soil yourself.”
(I’ll wait and allow the sound of your groaning to subside before you begin reading again.)
Underwear with the days of the week on them is useless. Since we started the lockdown, I can’t remember what day of the week it is. If it was on my underwear, I’d have to pull down my pants to check. Wouldn’t it just be easier if they made socks with the days of the week on them? One sock could be the day and one sock could have the number of the date. Then, all I would have to do is look at my feet. This would be much easier to do on a video call.
After 8 weeks of experimenting, we have discovered that there is no amount of kisses that makes Linus walk away. Keebler won’t get close enough to our faces to kiss and Otis gives us a “Don’t even think about!” look.
That is close enough, human. Go kiss Linus.
The pandemic has given teenagers a legitimate excuse to walk so far behind their parents no one knows they’re with them. Instead of coming off as a surly adolescent, people think they are being cautious and caring by observing strict social distancing guidelines.
Have to bake…have to bake…have to bake!!! Oregano’s birthday is coming up. I can’t go to the store, so I will have to make the sacrifice and bake something at home. Since he did such a fantastic job for my birthday, I’m going to attempt an untested recipe for Thin Mint cupcakes. If the cupcakes wind up tasting terrible, I can always blindfold him and give him a few real Thin Mints from the still hidden stash.
Before I begin with what has turned into a lengthy update, I need to come clean about something. It has been weighing on me more heavily with each passing week of this lockdown. It’s not easy for me to say this, but it is the right thing to do. It is my fault we are all in this situation. Back in September, Oregano asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate my 50th birthday in April. I told him that I wanted to do something I’ve never done before. I meant spending my birthday with my toes in the sand on a warm beach. To be fair, I have also never been quarantined on my birthday so technically, what I am experiencing qualifies as a bucket list item. I should have been more specific about my birthday wish and now we are all suffering. For this I am deeply sorry.
Phew…. I feel so much better now that I got that off my chest.
The pandemic caused us to cancel all the plans we had made to celebrate my milestone birthday at the beach in the South Carolina Low Country. Because social distancing guidelines prohibit dining in restaurants or having gatherings with more than 5 people, coming up with an alternate local celebration was not an option, or so I thought.
This towel would have looked great on the beach. Instead, it adorned our couch.
Over the past few weeks, Oregano spent an inordinate amount of time holed up in our home office. I figured he was busy with work and when I finally asked him what he was doing, his response was, “I’m working on stuff. People whose birthdays are in the next few weeks shouldn’t ask too many questions.” Apparently, he and my close friends were all scheming to plan a way to make my quarantine birthday an unforgettable day. Boy, did they ever! On one hand I feel incredibly blessed to have a husband and friends who love me so much they went to extreme measures to make sure I felt special. On the other hand, I’m a little concerned about how good they all are at being sneaky.
Oregano started the festivities by telling me that there were a few surprises in store for me and suggested I might enjoy them more while wearing make-up and real clothes. I’m not going to lie. I had quite a bit of trepidation at the thought of wearing pants with a button and a zipper for the first time in 7 weeks. I’m very happy to report that they still fit. It was a birthday miracle!
The first surprise eveeryone had up their collective sleeves was a virtual birthday party and a Vid Hug video message montage. We got to chat for quite awhile then they sang what was simultaneously the best and worst rendition of Happy Birthday ever.
After the virtual party and lunch, Oregano suggested we take advantage of the fact that it was sunny and warm for the first time all week and sit in the front garden. I managed to sit still for all of 5 minutes before the siren call of the weeds lured me from my relaxation. I popped up, grabbed my weeding fork, gloves and bucket. Oregano looked at me incredulously and asked, “You can’t let that go for one afternoon?” I told him I was still enjoying being outside with him and this would get rid of the weeds. I was killing 2 birds with 1 stone. (No birds were harmed. Don’t worry.)
As I worked my way around the garden, I noticed that I couldn’t see through the slats of our small picket fence. I didn’t know what was blocking my view and started poking a finger at the reflective obstruction. Oregano sat snickering behind me and told me to walk around to the front where a big banner was hanging notifying the entire neighborhood of my age. I laughed at how oblivious I was.
Dandelions eradicated, I sat down to read until my asthma flared up from all the pollen. I went into the house to use my inhaler and just as I stepped onto my front porch, I noticed a line of cars coming down the street while honking their horns. I didn’t pay much attention because this had happened earlier in the day because one of my neighbors was also celebrating a birthday. I figured these were more of her guests, but as the cars kept approaching our house, I realized it was a parade of my friends for a drive by birthday party!
A small smattering of the heaps of birthday love I received.
After 7 weeks of hearing my friends as disembodied voices on the other end of the phone or as talking heads during video calls it was amazing to see them in 3 dimensions.
It was frustrating to not be able to spend more time with everyone or give them hugs. Then I realized the upside of quarantine birthday parties, I get to see everyone, but I don’t have to share my birthday cake! However, wearing a mask makes it really hard to blow out the birthday candles.
The pandemic has forced people to get creative and improvise with what they have on hand or can find in the few stores that are open. My friends were the embodiment of ingenuity in crisis. One friend decorated her car with a banner made of paper plates, others made signs from boxes supplies ordered online had been shipped in. One friend cranked up her car stereo, got of her car then sang and danced in the street. They managed to create birthday cards or modify whatever cards they could find. They even sanitized the cards and gifts for my protection.
At the end of the day, Oregano was exhausted. He told me that it is very difficult to plan a surprise party and even harder when the person you are surprising never leaves the house. He managed to pull it off though. I might have to toss the guy a few Thin Mints for his efforts.
Apparently, when you turn 50, even your cake starts to sag.
Good Humored 