Staying healthy was my husband’s and my top priority during Covid quarantine. Next on the list: staying sane. I am grateful to report that neither of us came down with Covid (though a few of our friends and neighbors did). And I’m pretty sure we didn’t go (too) crazy and are emerging from this experience whole and even more grateful. I guess some might argue that uprooting our lives and moving to a place where we have no history or connections “crazy,” but I like to think of it as the romantic or YOLO variety.

Not to say that we didn’t have our emotional ups and downs. We most certainly did. (Though I probably made up 75-80% of the roller coaster rides in our home. Thank goodness for a stable and supportive husband while my emotions were pin-balling all over the place!) I remember one incident where our dog, Sadie, found and destroyed one of my headbands and I dissolved into a puddle of tears on the spot. (Irrational reaction, anyone?) Or the time that Alan threw away the uneaten beans from dinner while cleaning up and I read him the riot act for being wasteful.

While these outbursts weren’t proportional to the inciting events, they did have the value of making me realize that I couldn’t process the BIG feelings because they were just too… much. And that those feelings were coming out in smaller ways instead. So I started finding itty bitty ways to process my emotions and to self-soothe.

Baking

Something about the idea of the world possibly coming to an end simultaneously prompts people to start baking. Maybe it’s the thought that if you are going to die you’d like to finally learn to bake your grandmother’s famous butter cake. Or that you can stop counting carbs because who cares? Or maybe it’s just to have a way to fill your time with a task and your home with a comforting smell. My baking spree started when a friend asked me to join him in providing goodies to a local hospital whose staff was getting crushed under the weight of their Covid-responsibilities. Once a week for about 3 months I baked everything from bars, brownies, cookies, pound cakes, breads (for finger sandwiches), and cupcakes. (I’ll link my favorite recipes in another post). It was beyond rewarding and I was almost sad when that need came to an end, though incredibly relieved that it meant the worst had passed in terms of our hospital cases.

So I turned to making things for Alan and me. And Sadie! She’d been so good while I made tantalizing morsels that were never doggie-friendly, so I rewarded her with a few batches of doggie-exclusive treats (again, recipe linked soon!). And Alan was pretty excited that I’d loosened the gluten restriction in our house and started making us personal pizza dinners, quiches for breakfast, and cakes- just because.

For some reason I never quite made it to the sourdough craze, but I think the rest of the city (and country!), had that covered…

Music

Of course. No surprise there. As an artist, I often find that I can best process my emotions through creative expression. And sometimes in that journey I discover more hidden things that I hadn’t known were there. So for the first 2 months of quarantine I recorded a song almost every day and put them up on Facebook and YouTube. Looking back it feels a little audacious and bold. I’m used to prepping and primping for weeks- or even months- before a gig! But I’m glad I have those videos now. For posterity, for promotion (low-budget music videos are super cool, right?), or for proof that this strange experience actually happened.

My band, The Buttery Barmaids, also kept pretty busy. With the temporary and indefinite closing of venues, bars, and restaurants, we lost our monthly gig at The Red Room as well as some shows we’d been hired to do. Not to mention we could no longer meet in person- a huge shift from our once-a-week rehearsals. And juuuuust before Covid hit, we were spending every day together for weeks performing the music for a one-act play series. The silver lining to this forced separation was that we started to make digital content! Recording vocals and video from our separate apartment (with the help of Apple ear buds, snowball mics, and the popular ring lights), we then sent our clips to our friend, Claytie Mason, to make the final magic touches!

Happy Hour

I KNOW we weren’t the only ones waiting for 5:00 to roll around each day. (Or was it sometimes 4:30? Time was abstract and following it was optional.) Since we tried to minimize the number of times we went to a store (damn those fomite transmissions), we started ordering a case of wine at a time. And we learned pretty quickly that having another bottle on hand as soon as we finished the first was a dangerous situation… So we came up with a system of enjoying a civilized cocktail in our backyard at the end of the work day. We’d sit on the wooden lounge chairs we snagged on Craigslist just before lockdown (score!), drink an old fashioned (or a gin and tonic, if it was a warm evening), and do a NY Times crossword on my phone. (a Wednesday one if we needed an easy fix and a Saturday one if we needed to blow off steam.) Then a glass of wine with dinner and one while we watched a show afterward. (*favorite shows we watched together: Unorthodox, Giri Haji, The Bureau, Alone, Ozark, and probably many more that I’m forgetting. Not to mention alllll the shows I watched during the day, which I’ll write about separately).

I think you’re starting to notice a theme; Sadie and Alan feature pretty prominently in my covid-sanity cocktail. It goes without saying but probably bears articulating anyway: those two were my absolute-number one-essential-rockstar team. And I got to be with them every day! I don’t know how I got so fortunate as to find both of these special love bugs but I’m going to do all I can to keep them close and cared for.