Hello all! I hope you’re doing well—or as well as can be expected during these scary times. I also hope that you’re taking care of yourselves and your loved ones.
I haven’t blogged since January. Sorry about that. I really tried to write. The desire was there, I had posts lined up, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to finish anything. That seems to have changed, so expect new posts soon.
In the meantime, let’s talk about what I was up to during the coronavirus and quarantine months.
The Coronavirus
To my knowledge, no one in my family has caught the coronavirus yet (thank God, knock on wood). A friend of mine did have a family member fall seriously ill, but they have since recovered.
Edit 8/16/20: At least four distant family members and family friends have now battled COVID-19, while two others have possibly died from it.
I’m still holding my breath. Several of my family members are vulnerable because of their jobs, ages, and/or health. I’ve been most worried about my dad. He’s an older gentleman who regularly comes in contact with a lot of people due to his job. There have been a few scares where a coworker got sick and it wasn’t immediately clear if they had the ‘rona (none of them did). Luckily, my dad has access to gloves, masks, and disinfectant supplies to use at work. He’s also been extremely careful about disinfecting himself when he comes home to protect me and my mom.
Speaking of scares, my parents and I did have a bad round of colds back in February. My dad caught it first and spread it all over the house (as usual). He got over it relatively quickly; I was sick for about a week. It was awful. I had fevers off and on, my throat closed up, and my entire body hurt. Just as I got over it, my mom caught it.
Although I’m like 99% sure that we had regular colds, the other 1% of me can’t help but wonder if that’s all we had. According to an article I read a while back, it’s possible that we could have had a mild version of the virus. I definitely had many of the symptoms, including pink eye. Nope. I’m probably just being paranoid.
In Quarantine
Quarantine was a mixed bag. As a happy homebody and a minor germaphobe, I didn’t overly care that I couldn’t go many places. At first.
Things went downhill for me when my local library temporarily closed its physical branches due to the coronavirus. We were lucky. We were able to pick up a bunch of DVDs to tide us over the day before they closed. On top of that, I already had physical copies of Sarah J. Maas’ latest book Crescent City and two volumes of the Demon Slayer manga to enjoy.
Nevertheless, I was super disappointed that I had to cancel all of our holds. I was on the waitlist for lots of good DVDs: Charlie’s Angels, Jumanji: The Next Level, Knives Out, and Gemini Man. I had been creeping down the list for literally months on many of those items. The biggest stab in my heart was losing my holds on two volumes of My Hero Academia, which were processed THE DAY the library closed.
The library offered home delivery for a time after the branches closed, but we couldn’t chance it. Our neighbors sometimes steal packages from our doorstep, and our mail often ends up in the wrong box. That’s why we had started picking up our holds at the nearby branch in the first place. I once had to pay around $30 to replace two stolen manga volumes. I didn’t want to think about how much it would cost to replace a lost DVD.
I was mad. I was frustrated. I cried. I fell into a dark mood. I felt like an insensitive loser for getting upset about something so minor, but I later realized that my feelings weren’t entirely about the DVDs. I think that’s when the enormity of the coronavirus situation fully hit me. I couldn’t pretend like everything was normal anymore.
Three things got me through that rough time: reading, anime, and music. I fell into a complete reread of Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series, which is one of my all-time faves. At the same time, I was watching One Piece, the Inuyasha movies, and Boruto, which got me into collecting anime opening and ending songs again. I slowly built myself a nice happy place.
And the icing on the cake? The minute the library reopened from the quarantine, we got a surprise package in the mail: those two volumes of My Hero Academia. God is good.
Making the Best of Things
While I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of the situation, I have to admit that some of the discounts and freebies flying around during the quarantine certainly made things more tolerable.
Boost Mobile, our phone company, blessed its customers with free international calling and extra data for a month. It was great being able to check on my peeps overseas, but I was happy as a lark to get that extra data! For me, 30 GB (the free 20 GB plus my usual 10 GB) was essentially like having unlimited data. And yes, I still got throttled before the month was over.
I was super happy to get some new games too. Monument Valley 2 and Kingdom Rush: Origins, which had both been on my wishlist for a long time, were free briefly. I downloaded them for my iPad. Sadly, I didn’t catch Mini Metro, which had gone off sale by the time I found out it was free. I also missed the 99-cent sale for Kingdom Rush Vengeance. Oh well.
My favorite freebie of all was Taco Tuesday, courtesy of Taco Bell. For several Tuesdays in a row, they gave away a free Doritos Locos taco. Combine that with my favorite $5 Chalupa box combo meal and I was in absolute taco heaven.
Sometimes it’s the little things.