There is no toilet paper. I think when I look back on this week I will be tempted to say, "Perhaps I was exaggerating. Maybe there was toilet paper and I just didn't know it." But I have been looking, and the aisles are empty.
Spring break never works out quite as well as I think it ought to. I have always felt a little guilty about this: I have a week in which I don't have to fulfill my primary work responsibility and I still get paid! I should live it up! But-- it's always a little lonely, because no one else in my family has time off. And I always have to finish a ton of my second-least-favorite work responsibility (grading), usually with a side of my absolutely-least-favorite work responsibility (dealing with plagiarism), and I have always made myself a Big List of things I will catch up on around the house.
This year I decided I would plan in some fun. I would use credit card points to visit Alex in NYC! (Trip canceled due to Elwood's coronavirus concerns. I'm really glad I wasn't in NYC this week.) I would make a day trip to Chicago instead! (Trip canceled at the last minute, because yesterday was a wild day, friends.) I would get together with friends! (Both of the people I'd made plans with canceled on me, one because she was sick and the other because it's been a wild week for higher ed administrators.) I would try out a barre class! (Conflict with ballet; didn't work out.) I would nail all of my workouts for my 10K training program! (They postponed my 10K race and my motivation tanked.) I would schedule a massage! (This one I did manage to complete, but I expended too much mental energy wondering what germs were lurking in the facility.)
So I spent a lot of time this week avoiding my grading and refreshing the coronavirus case counter. I took a 48-hour Twitter break when it got to be too much, but I am not sure how to balance the "it's too much" part of Twitter with the "offers smart funny human contact in a season of social isolation" part of Twitter. I don't know how much my OCD history and tendencies come through here, but I am trying to be patient with myself, to remember that my particular brain is not well-suited to this degree of uncertainty but that things will probably be okay just the same.
It's a strange time to be alive, I keep saying. Would I feel better if we had more toilet paper? Maybe the decision to subscribe to four print newspapers was prescient and not just anachronistic. I hope that's just a joke. Who knows, though?
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