Quarantine Chronicles Day 47: My report card at the May Day break

Jasper and Annie couldn’t sleep anymore this morning and got me up to celebrate their 7th birthday with a frenzied party consisting of giving them each a high-dollar chew bone and that was pretty much the highlight of my Friday, May 1.

And, May 1, as we celebrate my 47th Quarantine Chronicle, is a good day to assess how I’ve been doing so far. There are, happily, a number of sites offering suggestions on things to do during lockdown. Some suggestions I’ve actually followed, some I’ve dismissed.

1. 1. Keep in touch with family and friends. Facebook and Twitter lets me do some of this fairly easily, which is good, because I can’t go anywhere. The highlight of my day is a Zoom meeting with my coworkers, who are both my family and friends. I swap messages with my son Ray pretty regularly, and my wife and daughter live with me, so we keep in touch by hollering down the hallway.
   2. Read a book. Done and done and done. The best so far has been Anne Tyler’s “Redhead by the Side of the Road,” and I’m now enthralled by “Notes from an Apocalypse,” by Mark D. O’Connell, a collection of stories from various aspects of The End of the World, from survivalist bunkers in South Dakota, to a New Zealand end times retreat in New Zealand and to the inevitable right-wing conspiracists. It’s a clever and sometimes darkly humorous account.
   3. Keep a journal. Well, yeah…
   4. Clean your home. Look, I’ve done what I can. Cleared off six kitchen shelves. That comes out to one shelf every 7.8 days. OK, not a whirlwind pace, but remember, I’m keeping a journal, too. Leave me alone! It’ll get done! Next on my “clean your home” list is to vacuum the living room because the carpet is littered with bits of high-dollar birthday chew bones.
   5. Try a new workout routine or meditate. This prompts me to ask, “What was wrong with the old workout routine?” As for meditating, does thinking about what “Quarantine Chronicles Day 48” will be about count? If yes, then I’m meditating. Furiously.
   6. Have a Zoom cocktail party. These sound good on paper, but Zoom works best when people take turns talking and everyone else respectfully listens. That doesn’t work great as a cocktail-party platform, with people falling over each other, even before they’ve had too much to drink.
   7. Catch up on binge-watching Netflix. You know, I thought I’d be better at this one, but nothing’s caught my attention yet. Maybe I’ve already seen all the good shows. Maybe it’s time for some repeats, like HBO’s “The Newsroom” or “The Wire.” “Billions” is back, but Showtime only releases an episode per week, so that’s not exactly a binge. And HBO’s “Succession” won’t be out until summer, by which time this’ll surely all be over, right? Say yes.
   8. Organize! All right, you don’t have to yell. I think cleaning out a kitchen shelf every 7.8 days counts as organizing. I’ve thrown out what’s taken me years to accumulate, including that bottle of pomegranate liqueur. And I just know the next time someone requests an exotic cocktail from me in The Barn, it’s going to call for pomegranate liqueur. I’m gonna substitute cherry juice and bitters.
   9. Keep up on the latest COVID news from reliable sources. We do! The Post and the Health Department for Long Beach news, and the occasional briefings from my beloved governor, and, occasionally, for the pure entertainment value, the Trump briefings, though they’re only funny for a minute and then they get profoundly sad. It’s best to catch the highlights on Twitter. I also keep track of the various conspiracy crackpots, but that’s a segment that’s growing too fast for me to keep up.
   10. Keep surfaces disinfected and wash your hands frequently. That’s not really a helpful suggestion on how to pass the time while locked in your house, but, yes, Mom, I’m washing my hands, and today we’re doing it while singing “Happy Birthday” to my dogs. Come on, everybody, wash up and sing along!