“How many likes did you get in the quarantine, Grandma?”

If you had to pick a time period in which to be quarantined, now is actually a pretty convenient time.

With high-speed internet access, computers, and smartphones, you can contact almost anyone on the planet.  With the plethora and variety of companies that deliver to your front door, it’s much easier to not leave the house.

Just this week, I finished The Kid’s birthday shopping, got a new trashcan for my station wagon, and had a doctor’s appointment.  The Kid played bar trivia, had a beer with old friends, played a board game, and met with co-workers.

All without leaving the house, or having anyone over.

But in the true spirit of yin and yang, there’s also a dark side to that wifi.  I’m talking about those camera-ready folks who are masters of social media.  The kind of folks who post photos of perfectly lit rainbow avocado toast captioned, “Breakfast on the run.”, pics of themselves standing in front of a Greek sunset captioned, “Blessed”, and a perfect Princess birthday party captioned, “Threw it together this morning.”

Under normal circumstances, this crowd is mildly irritating.

But during quarantine, when even the most stable personalities are operating with some level of anxiety and depression, those people make me feel like a complete, glow in the dark loser.

Some guy named Thomas Cervetti who lives in Malaysia “was bored during quarantine”.  So he and his equally bored family decided to gather up all the bath towels in the house and make an elaborate stop action surfing movie.  It looks like the love child of Peter Gabriel’s 1986 Sledge Hammer video and the classic surf movie, Endless Summer.

Truthfully, it’s a creative, adorable, and highly entertaining diversion.

Using only bath towels.

Here’s my fancy quarantine plan for our bath towels at Chez Matthews: getting them out of the washer and into the dryer before they get moldy.

A couple spent an entire day making a rodent-sized art museum for their pet gerbils.  Smaller than playing cards, there were “Vincent van Gogh” canvasses, a furry little “Mona Lisa”, and some pretty impressive impressionist paintings.

Again, adorable.  Especially the photos of the gerbils standing around them, looking like art critics.  All they need are tiny little glasses of cheap, warm Champagne.

I’ve been artistically serving our dinner on matching plates and coordinating my hair elastics with my sweatshirt.

Actually, I haven’t put a whole lot of effort into the ponytail holder thing.  Tonight the tie I have in is an entirely different shade of blue than my shirt.

Someone else designed and sewed a bunch of felt dolls.  That may sound mundane, but these dolls look exactly like every single member of her entire extended family.  Now she has the cutest soft, fuzzy family facsimiles to share her quarantine with. 

When I try to sew a button back onto something, I usually end up needing a quick trip to urgent care and seven or eight stitches.

One family has a small door that leads to a space under the stairs that’s used as a dog house for their gorgeous Golden Doodle, Rusty.  They decided to spend some of their quarantine time going all canine curb appeal on it.  They put in a tiny leaded glass front door, vintage-style mailbox, a porch light sconce that looks like it’s straight from Pottery Barn, and a faux window with attached window box full of blooms.  There is a painted, weathered sign with his address: 7878 Doodle Drive.

And I’m sitting here covered in Crowley fur and dog slobber feeling about as creative as a mimeograph machine.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.