Pandemic Partnerships: The Where's-My-Vaccine Quarantine Blues
Volume: Loud wail!
Issue: How do I get this *&#% internet to schedule my shot?
Date: I am available for a poke anytime!
Real Date: March 15, 2021
“Unfortunately there is no vaccine for geezer or gezess crankiness!”
— Rae Jean Beech
Pandemic Partnerships: How to Beat the No-Vaccine Quarantine Blues
What happens when a quarantining aging man and aging woman are stripped bare and put in a locked down cell for two years? Do they each turn into a bear or do they bare their heart and soul to each other? Do they barely make it? Or do they grin and bear it?
Do they ruffle each other’s feathers? Or do they snuggle on the feather bed?
Do they do the deed, or do they suffer feeling libido-dead? Do they say “let’s screw!” Or do they screw up each other’s heads? Do they suck it up or do they f___ it up?
And all that can happen in a 24-hour day that slows down to feel like a week, but when it is over feels like it Zoomed by? Time warps for an aging man and woman in lockdown and time wraps itself around an aging man and woman in isolation. And does the wrapping around feel like a straight jacket, or like a butterfly chrysalis that bursts open to a rainbow cacophony of possibilities.
No distractions means lots of push and pull of actions and reactions. The world outside has shrunken and it feels like an aging man and an aging woman have shrunken heads. No distractions and lots of inaction at the same time. Lots of farting and lots of I-should-be-starting.
The $64,000 Question (which is actually the $200,000 Question given the rate of inflation from the 1955 Quiz Show to 2020): Can quarantined stale air and cutting the cheese open minds and open hearts for a locked down geeze?
WhatsaBoomertodo? These tips will help lighten up a heavy load—and everyone knows where that heavy load is after all the baking of pies, cakes, muffins, and breads for weeks now!
No one likes being a Quarantine Meanie and no one likes living with a Quarantine Wienie. Here are five tips to help when your world is feeling tipsy…
1. Don’t Do the To-Do List. So everyone has that Things-I-Will-Do-When-I-Retire List but has been too busy—until now—to do them. And who ever wanted to do them in the first place? When just getting from 8am to 10pm every day in lockdown mode is a mega chore on some days, why torture yourself by pulling out that list of the most dreaded chores? Here’s a suggestion for #1 on that To-Do List: 1.Change this “To-Do List” to a “Ta-Da List of Fun Things I Have Always Wanted to Do.”
2. Schedule/Schmedule. Yes, take a tip from the astronauts who are isolated in the tiny Space Station for months at a time and ALWAYS set a schedule. Why not create some bare bones schedule to hang some semblance of normality on. Perhaps post a daily schedule—when to eat, when to read, when to have that Blessed-Alone-Time-Without-My-Honey since Honey sometimes feels like he/she is breathing (garlic breath!) down my neck wayyy too often. Perhaps add a weekly schedule—remember that nursery rhyme where Monday is Wash Day, Tuesday is for ironing (who owns an iron anymore?!)- or choose Saturday for washing hair (and plucking facial hair) and other grooming as if you were going out on a Saturday night date. Some structure in a swirling, whirling, twirling world may help relieve that We-are-Not-in-Kansas-Anymore Feeling (unless you do live in Kansas!).
3. Lower the Bar (and fix that stiff drink!) So if Boomer Babes and their Boomer Buddies are in self-quarantine for months, more months, and maybe even years, why not cut each other some slack? The fewer the chores, the fewer The Chore Wars. “Shoulds” should be scrapped. Rules should—oops, there’s that “should” again—be broken and tossed into the re-cycle bin. Is THAT—THAT being dusting often, wearing fresh clothes every day, having a clean kitchen counter, cooking a hot dinner every night, exercising 30 minutes EVERY day, avoiding sweet desserts—really needed? Unusual times call for unusual expectations, so why not lower the bar and raise up that free spirit?
4. Have Compassion for your Compadre. Many pandemic partners are feeling the stress of 24/7 togetherness and are finding themselves wrapped in a cycle of conflicts every two or three weeks (if not per day sometimes!). How to wrap our heads around these corona quarantine tensions that we take it out on those we love? The cycle can be helped with compassion—truly believing that your partner is doing the very best they can at any given moment, even if it falls short of what you (or they) would want. True compassion can turn a fight-fight into an after-fight compromising win-win. And having compassion for your compadre extends to having kindness for yourself, as who is your best compadre after all, but yourself. And sometimes, if someone gets lucky, post-fight compassion can lead to blissful passion.
5. Perk up with Your Precious Old Dames/Precious Old Dudes (PODs). Sure we can’t touch, but electronic touch is the next best thing to staying connected with your PODs. Have fun with your phone, email your favorite male and female, get off your tuchus and get into Facebook-us, laugh on Zoom as if you and your best buds were in the same room, be a gram on Instagram, be sublime on FaceTime. Virtual hugs can be virtually life-saving! So when it comes to PODs and the Pandemic, we are all in this together. Actually, we are all in this alone together. The Beatles have a super antidote for Where's-My-Vaccine Quarantine Blues: “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
Ahhh men, ahhhh women, we can do this ahhhh-ll together!
Sending healing and hugs,
Irene