Last week was a decent one, I’d say. I mean, one day I lay in bed most of the day. And one day I was filled with despair for most of my waking hours. But SEVERAL days, I felt pretty good. There were two or three days where I felt truly cheerful. Ugh. That should be a good thing, right? But it felt so WRONG. Or not wrong, exactly. But just… unsuited to our current situation.

It’s that gulf between perception and reality that’s getting to me lately, I think. I’ve done a pretty good job of reducing my News Intake, so I am not actively bombarded with horror all day long. But the disjunct between what life FEELS like and what is actually going on is… hard to compute.

Does that make sense? Have you had these instances, too, of feeling like things are one way and then being snapped back to reality?

Saturday, I went out to run some errands (no-contact dropping off of Girl Scout cookies, putting our housecleaner’s check in the mail, going through the drive-through at the pharmacy) and it felt so normal. The streets weren’t anywhere near as busy as they are of a typical Time Before Saturday, but there were plenty of cars out and about. The parking lots of pharmacies and gas stations and grocery stores were full. There were people on the sidewalks, walking their dogs and waiting for the bus. But those people had on masks and BAM the façade of normalcy shattered.

It’s been so nice – So. Nice. – to have my husband home. He has been splitting up the job of helping Carla with her distance learning, which has reduced my frustration DRAMATICALLY. It’s been nice to have him around, to kiss or hug or chat with whenever I feel like. And he and Carla have been having so much fun – their relationship is the biggest joy of my life and sometimes, while I’m supposed to be reading on the couch (which – utter luxury!!!!!), I will instead listen to them chat over a Kiwi crate they are building or smile as Carla shrieks with glee while they wrestle or play air hockey or close my eyes with happiness as they perform a duet in the basement – my husband on the piano, Carla on vocals (and sometimes drums). It is absolutely purely wonderful. But… the reason my husband is home so often is that he’s not working.

I wanted an apple the other day. It sounded so good – crisp and sweet and healthful. But I kept thinking to myself, “No, I shouldn’t.” Why not, self? We have a bunch of apples in the upstairs fridge and a whole other bag of apples in the downstairs fridge. Apples are perishable; they won’t last forever. But I keep feeling like I should SAVE things like that, because I don’t know how/when I’ll be able to get more. (I logicked myself into eating the apple, but it took some coaxing.)

Just in the past two weeks we have branched out into getting occasional takeout. It’s been nice to know that I have an alternative to cooking YET ANOTHER MEAL, plus I feel good about supporting local restaurants. The first time we got pizza, it was so easy: we ordered everything in advance, the pizza place was completely empty except for one worker (and I effusively thanked her for being there), and I was able to no-contact collect my pizza, put it in the car, and bring it home. My husband and I developed a Takeout Plan, wherein I touched all the boxes and containers and he helped me transfer them to our own dishes and then I wiped everything down. It worked great.

This weekend, I went to get barbecue. The place was HOPPING – so many cars, and so many people going in and out even though the restaurant offers curbside “delivery.” As I pulled up, I noticed a man and his tweenage daughter leaving the restaurant with a heavy plastic bag laden with takeout containers – it was notable because he had his daughter with him (although, listen, you have to do what you have to do; I don’t know his situation or whether she was capable of staying at home or in the car or anything about them; I just noted it). I tried calling the curbside delivery line, but it kept disconnecting. So I steeled myself and went inside. I’ve been in the restaurant a million times, and it looked the same – although nearly empty – and there were two dudes jawing away at a high-top table near the entrance. My food wasn’t ready yet, but the bartender said he’d bring it out to my car so I escaped – gladly – and waited. I’d arrived at 6:40 – that’s when I saw the man and his daughter emerge with their takeout and get into their car. At 7:00, they walked back into the restaurant with their takeout package. I immediately had a bad feeling. My husband has a common first name – along the lines of Chris or Steve. I guessed that the father had the same name. When they re-emerged a few minutes later, this time with a big brown paper bag, it was clear what had happened. I even heard the man telling his daughter something about “another Steve” as they trekked back across the parking lot. Then, the bartender came out seconds later with a now-familiar white plastic bag and tried to hand it to me through my window.

Listen, this kind of thing would have made me squicky even in The Time Before: The other Steve and his daughter had clearly LEFT with my food. I don’t know whether they opened it up in the car or at home, or whether they’d started to put the pulled pork on plates or if a three-year-old had had a chance to poke around the fries with his fingers before they realized the error. At the very LEAST upsetting of the Possibility Spectrum (in which they didn’t open the bag but simply looked at the receipt and noticed it didn’t list the food they’d ordered), my food was more than twenty minutes old at that point. In normal times, I would have calmly told the poor bartender that I’d seen the food leave the premises and return, and that I wasn’t comfortable taking it home with me, and could they please make me a new batch. Instead, I burst into tears and blubbered at him about how they had taken the food home and I was FREAKED OUT. He said he’d get me fresh food – which I wanted, but of course then I felt guilty because the restaurant is probably barely squeaking by and I don’t want to contribute to its hastened demise – and I kept sobbing in my car outside the restaurant until he returned AGAIN and assured me they were making me everything fresh (which they did; it was all steaming when he finally returned to my car for a third time). I was able then, at least, to calm down enough to smile at him and apologize for being so hysterical. I certainly wouldn’t have reacted that way in normal times.

But it’s NOT normal times. And I keep going along as though it IS and then being slapped across the face with the fact that it ISN’T.