The day before yesterday I ate meat, just meat, for dinner. I had broiled a hunk of something bloody for my kids when they were here for our days and there was a plate of strips left over. So I sat on my couch watching Supernatural and didn’t even bother to cut. Strips of meat, straight to my face.
Yesterday I didn’t eat dinner at all. I had a piece of pumpkin pie when I got home from work and some sniff-test-failing milk. Tonight I may or may not have a microwave dinner. It’s nine and the jury’s still out. When it comes to food, I’m listless. I can go the whole day without even thinking about it. It’s not intentional. It’s not pathological. I like food. I just don’t care about it right now.
Lately all I want to do is sit on my couch and watch Supernatural. There are thirteen seasons—jackpot. I haven’t watched many movies during Covid, maybe they’re too self-contained, not bingeable. But I smoke series like crack. I watched all 9 seasons of The Office even though part of me was like am I really doing this and do I even like these people anymore now that Michael is gone? I started the original (Ricky Jervais) version too but caved on that one because accents. Downton Abbey kept me going for a good long time—that one I actually watched the movie too, I wasn’t ready to let it go, the whole shabang a masterpiece of nuance. I’ve been using TV to bond with my children: all 12 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race with my son—so many snuggles (hate the word, love the activity) and he’s eleven! Soaking it up before he’s a teen. All 5 seasons of Riverdale and all 7 seasons of The 100 with my 8-year-old daughter. More snuggles! I’ve watched a perhaps unsettling number of teenager series: The End of the F***ing World, 13 Reason Why, Sex Education. Is it weird that I get crushes? FML I’m a creep.
I hate when there’s only one season, but I’ll watch despite myself. The Queen’s Gambit (LOVE HER), Ratchett (costuming, sets, saturation!) (I almost ditched this one early because Nurse Ratchett was so one-dimensionally “evil,” but then she started to develop some complexity and I was sucked in.) Only one season? Withdraw like it’s the last hit. Itch for more to come but know that by then you won’t remember the first one.
What else do people do? I hear that baking bread is a thing. Writing novels. Happy hours over Zoom. Personally, I go to a lot of 12-step meetings online. One or two a day—more than many, less than some. There are marathons: 24 hours a day, meetings, across all continents. The variety, the availability—actually a really cool side effect of this digital adaptation to rat-bastard Covid. Helped me stay in touch with my SoCal community when I moved back to Portland in March–just when things really started busting. Helped me build new community here. But it’s not the same as an in-person meeting because it just isn’t, so we all talk about how we feel bad for people starting their recovery during Covid, never having had the experience of an in-person meeting—the energy, the fellowship, the weak coffee and strong cigarettes. In our community right now the same old things are extra: relapse upon relapse, overdoses, hospitalizations. (So glad fentanyl wasn’t a thing when I was shooting up twenty years ago). Suicides are up. Domestic violence. Depression and anxiety. (America was already sucking in all of these departments).
The people who bake bread—fuck off. Oh, you’re also learning three new languages? Eat shit. We already know about my TV situation. Every day I maintain up to twenty games of Words With Friends at once. On my phone. I do the NYT crossword puzzle and the Spelling Bee (anagrams). On my phone. I won’t stop playing Spelling Bee until I reach “amazing” (the category before “genius,” which I’ve achieved exactly twice in six months). I ostensibly read “the news” (on my phone) but get sucked into every single advice column. Even though I hate-read the advice from Miss Manners.
It’s the end of holiday season. For Xmas I bought a fake silver tree. My son does not approve and is not shy about it. Me and my daughter decorated it anyway. We went to the dollar store and blew forty bucks on holiday decorations for the whole damn apartment. Originally, I had a more subdued aesthetic in mind, classy. But my daughter likes red and green, classic. I reminded myself (repeatedly) that Xmas is for the kids, but there was still a part of me (selfish, petulant—stylish!) that wanted to “do me.” I cut myself a little slack for the attitude though. It’s my first time ever living alone in my own apartment. I’m forty-three, recently divorced, recently re-rehabilitated. I used to go for “character” in my apartment selections but things changed when I was in California and I got to live in a spotless stucco mini-villa during sober living. All us girls had chores every day and double-scrub on the weekend. Formerly a clutterer and a chaos bomb, I gradually learned new habits. I started to want things just so. When the time came, I rented something modern, clean, no nooks and crannies. It’s the nooks and crannies that get me.
LOCK IT DOWN 